Moose
don’t eat spruce. The only interaction
between moose and a spruce is during hunting season when a moose with a 60-inch
rack steps behind a spruce and disappears into a black hole, never to be seen
again until hunting season is over and
it strolls casually through your yard.
Nor
do moose eat hemlock. Or those things
we call cottonwood but are really balsam poplar.
Moose
do like birch. And willow. Also any ornamental trees or bushes you’ve
planted, the flowers and the vegetables growing in your garden, as well as any
Jack-o-Lanterns you’ve set outside.
But
not spruce. So, in its wisdom, the US
Forest Service decided to welcome more moose into the area by clearing a large
swath of land not far from where I live.
The spruce and hemlock and many of the cottonwoods were all but clear-cut. A bunch of birch were cut, too, but many
were left to propagate little birches which the moose really like, all in the interests of enhancing moose habitat.
Not
many spruce were left. Just a few, and
those were skinny enough that no hunting season black holes could lurk behind
them.
All
this chopping down of trees resulted in gazillions of tree trunks, shorn of
their branches, all laid side by side in nice decks where you can drive your
truck right up to them and cut them into rounds with your handy Stihl 024 Wood
Boss chainsaw. Which is what I was doing yesterday and today.
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| One of many decks. |
But
yesterday is what I want to tell you about.
In
between rain showers, and sometimes during them, I cut round after round of
spruce and birch and loaded them into the back of my mid-sized, short-bed
pickup. By the time I’d half-filled the
bed of the truck, I was once again having one of those
when-are-you-going-to-start-acting-your-age conversations with myself. This was accompanied by heavy breathing of
the exhausted kind, bottles of water, and leaning on the tailgate, all while
surveying the pile of cut rounds that needed to be lifted into the truck, which
by now seemed to me to be getting higher and higher off the ground as the
rounds of wood lay on the ground gaining weight by the second.
A
truck full of firewood passed me, and we exchanged waves. It stopped about 50 feet away and two guys
got out.
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| About what I'd accomplished before the miracle struck. |
“Would
you like us to help load your truck?” one of them asked. I looked at all that heavy birch at my feet
and said, “YES! Really?” I figured they’d pick up all the rounds I’d
already cut, but NO! One man went back
to his truck and grabbed his chain saw.
Then,
one man cutting, and the other loading my truck, they proceeded to make sure I
had a full load. I was really
grateful. So were my back, my hands,
and my shoulders.
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| When Hill and Micah finished the job. |
As
we stood around shaking hands and introducing ourselves, the older of the two,
Hill, said, “You know Jesus loves you, don’t you?”
Man,
I figured if that’s what nudged these two Good Samaritans to stop and help out
an old woman, then by golly, He must.
“I saw you here and figured if I helped you out a bit, I could say
that,” said Hill.
Hill
and Micah, the younger guy, got in their truck and drove off. I stood there thinking about what Hill had
said, how expressions of belief and “Jesus loves you” and even "Merry Christmas" have become almost non-PC
these days. Myself, I figure religion is
a personal subject and I choose not to discuss it.
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| Hill and Micah |
But
who am I to argue about Hill and Micah filling up my truck with firewood, and
why they did so.? Far as I’m concerned, Jesus loves them.
And
so do I.
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| Home and in the woodlot. |
This is a truck that left before Jesus nudged Hill and Micah to help me. It has nothing to do with my story. I just thought it was funny.
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| Pretty sure he got into the truck once they got off this bumpy dirt road. |