Where's the wood?

Once upon a time, back in the 70's.....yep, I'm going there.
We bought our first home in 1978.  This was the year that electricity was king.  The all electric home was the rage.  Buy all electric and have a clean home.  If you buy all electric, you get a great rate on electricity! We bought our all electric home and the great rate lasted a couple of years.  We soon found out how much electricity it takes to heat a home.  We could be cold all winter and eat, or we could be warm and starve.
We invested in a wood burning stove so we could eat AND be warm.  This led us to a tradition that we enjoyed for the next 15 years while living in Price, Utah.

Every year as we began to prepare for back to school, we also had to prepare for winter.  Charlie would oil up the chainsaw and I would put together a big picnic lunch.  We threw the saw, the lunch, and the kids in the truck and headed into the mountains around Price in search of firewood.  These outings became such an adventure for the kids.  We saw some pretty gorgeous country.  One time we were up Schoffield and got the truck stuck on a mountain precipice.  Scary.  

Once the wood (many truckloads later) was home and unloaded, it was time to split the wood for burning.  We had so many hours together gathering and splitting wood then piling it up on the side of the house.  It became a game when we got a hold of a log splitter and could take turns with the lever.

Many years I remember someone saying, "Wouldn't it be fun if we just had a forest behind our house?  Then we could just walk out back and cut down a tree."

Last weekend, Charlie and I were out back in our own little forest cleaning up after  Hurricane Irene.  The smell of the fresh cut wood and the sound of the chainsaw brought back all those years of gathering firewood with our children.   Thanks, my sweet children, for these wonderful memories!!  We missed each of you last weekend.