Autumn has come again, and it a tide as inevitable as the changing of the leaves. As we speak (or as you read perhaps) thousands and thousands of country and suburban men (lets face it, its pretty much just men. If you’re a girl and you really honestly do enjoy spending a few hours with a chainsaw then I guess you prove me wrong, but really. It’s basically just guys, maybe their kids too) are trespassing, sneaking, and forging through whatever forested land they can find in search of dead trees. Fuel for the wood stove. Energy trapped in dead organisms, just waiting to be released in a controlled blaze to keep friends and family warm through the long coming winter.

Acquiring this fuel is a spectacular process, which you may not believe until you look at a vast field beside an isolated turkey farm, the land bulldozed and the trees laying twisted and mangled on the far border. Come Saturday dozens will swarm with pickup trucks of various condition, beating the wood chipper but leaving the willow and softwood for ‘some idiot’.

Chainsaws slice the trunks and limbs into big cylinder-shaped chunks which get tossed by the kids into the back of the truck, or they get piled up and split by men with that strange light in their eye—like blacksmiths at the forge. Sweat and blood are shed, backs are pulled, fingers crushed. These wounds, however, are disregarded in the pursuit. And it makes you wonder. Has the urbanite lost something in their move away from the land? And don’t half these guys forget to even cover their woodpiles when it snows?