Not for wimps

HALLOWELL -- The two inches of ice seemed to be welded to the bed of pickup truck on Sunday morning. I grabbed the ice chisel, hopped up on the tailgate and began chopping away at the thick glaze left by Friday's ice storm. After 15 minutes or so, I had removed most of the ice. Now, it was off to neighboring Manchester to pick up the last few logs of a cord of ash firewood I had purchased in November.We didn't have it as rough as southern Maine, where thousands remained without power as of Monday morning. But there was enough ice here to making the going treacherous and outdoor chores tougher than normal. My chore for Sunday was to gather the last of the wood. Over the previous three weeks, I'd made four trips to gather the four- and five-foot lengths of ash. Now I estimated we had two trips remaining. So I loaded the ice chisel, a chain saw, an eight-pound sledge hammer and a 20-pound iron digging bar (or crowbar as some call it) and it was off to work. The folks who sold me the wood had stacked it along the edge of their yard next to the woods. They were kind enough to let me back up the truck across their lawn to the wood pile, which made loading the logs a breeze. On Sunday that wasn't possible. My path was blocked. In clearing their driveway, they'd plowed a mixture of wet snow and slush along the edge of the yard in a pile about three feet in height. No problem I thought. I would simply bulldoze my way through the pile by getting a running start up the driveway and smashing the icy obstacle hither and yon. But then logic prevailed. I surveyed the snowbank. It was frozen solid with the consistency of concrete. I decided I wasn't quite ready to inflict thousands of dollars worth of damage on the truck. Alas, we would have to hand-carry the logs, some of which weighed well over 100 pounds about 40 feet to the truck. Erin and I spent a good portion of the afternoon dislodging the wood from a mass of ice using the chisel, digging bar and sledge. Once the logs were free of the frozen grip, we rolled and slid them across the ice-covered lawn before loading them one-by-one into the truck. Some were too big to heft so I sawed them in half. By the time, we'd finished loading and unloading two truckloads, my hands were freezing and my back was sore. I was drenched in sweat, hungry, cranky, ready for a nap and wondering why I ever left Southern California. Why put ourselves through such misery? We could have waited until the ice thawed or even put off the job until spring. Or I could have ordered a cord of wood, cut, split and delivered. But that would've been too easy. We're Mainers after all. No one ever said this was an easy place to live. -- Ben Sturtevant