Creating Fire

I can remember at various times in my life thinking, "I hope someday I am able to share this with my son."

It might have been while I was climbing a mountain, or playing football in High School, or fishing with my dad.

I must admit that this whole having a kid thing still doesn't feel real , but every so often I have one of those "I'm going to have a kid!" moments and I get a little misty eyed. When I tell Anne about it, she looks me in the face and says, "Your going to cry a little bit aren't you?" and my typical response is , "A little bit... yeah."

So what kinds of things should I teach Conner other than how to split wood? I'm going to have to think on this one for a while. I do know that some day I will teach him how to make fire without matches or a lighter.

And hopefully God will grant me the ability to use the powerful symbolism of this skill to teach Conner about life...

So We're Having a Boy! Better get some Wood to Split!

Before we knew whether we were having a boy or a girl, it didn't really matter to me. I would be excited either way, but now knowing that we are having a boy....wow!

Anne makes fun of me because one of the first things I said after finding out was that I needed to get some wood to split. It seemed so rational to me at the time and weird to her.

"Why chopping wood?" she asked. "What does that have to do with having a boy?" Truth is, at the time I didn't know why I had said that? Chopping wood? What does that have to do with raising a son? But then I got to thinking about it...

As a young boy, some of my fondest memories are of riding around in a wagon behind my dad's tractor in the fall while he was clearing out trees around our house. The smell of gas and chainsaw exhaust, freshly cut pine and watching my larger-then-life dad split wood. He had to be the toughest dad in the world and could certainly beat-up the fathers of every neighborhood boy I knew! To me it was the most manly thing one could do, and my dad was showing me how to do it!

He showed me how you don't try to split the big logs in the middle, how you stack the wood between two trees, or place a couple of logs perpendicular to the stack and on an angle to hold in the next row of logs. I spent hours outside playing with freshly cut pine cones and gnarly branches. Covered in sap, the pine cones would magically become hand grenades and the sticks various rifles, guns and rocket launches for the endless military campaign waged by the boys of my neighborhood.

When dad would stop to get a drink and take a break, I would attempt to pick up the splitting maul he was using. As if it were Excalibur, I was unable to remove it from the log he had placed it in. To me my dad was a wood splitting god, and if I was ever to be a man, I had to split wood. If I was ever to be a father to a son, I would have to pass along that torch!

It just so happens that we recently had an enormous loblolly pine removed from our yard. I asked that they leave me some logs to split. The logs are so big that I can't even move them so I must split them were they lay...and so it begins...