Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

by David Heiller This time of year, it’s hard to see beauty, when all you see is mud. Ten days ago people were raking their lawns and burning their fields. Roads were drying. Mud was disappearing. Peony shoots and crocuses were popping up. Then Mother Nature dumped a foot of snow on us on Monday, March 27. At first it was fun, seeing all that snow. Some people saw the bright side. Maurice Bennett told me that the ground could use that extra moisture. But the fun wore off. It didn’t take long, maybe 10 minutes. And now, after a week of slow melting, it’s mud season again. Oh, mud. Mud season. The floors need constant mopping. And as soon as you mop it, the dog sneaks in and leaves a fresh set of tracks. Rugs get caked from wiping your feet. You could go mud-bogging on our rugs. Then they dry and you’ve got a gravel pit instead of a mud pit. You give the rug a good shake, and get sandblasted by grit. There’s mud on the carpet, mud on the car seat, mud in the bathtub...

by David Heiller Does your household have domains? Our does.   For example, the basement is my domain. Cindy doesn’t go down there at all. Maybe once a year, if she has to. That’s where the pump is, and the jars of pickles and cans of paint and dahlia bulbs and storm windows and a worm bed. And don’t forget the mice and spiders. It has a dirt floor and fieldstone walls, and can only be entered through an outside cellar door, and it’s my domain. Lucky me. Cindy has her own domains too. The kitchen, for example. That’s where she bakes bread and makes supper and keeps all those spices that I have never used. Some domains we share, like the garden. Last spring I insulted a lady friend when I asked her husband if he would show me his garden. I thought it was his domain. His wife informed me that she worked in the garden too. So it was THEIR domain. Some people may think of domains as sexist. They think if only Joe works in the shop fixing engines and welding broken h...

David Heiller “I only saw wood in April,” Ken declared on Saturday morning, April 5. “And May if I have to.” He made that declaration to Deane and me before we got going on a pile of black ash logs. He was saying it tongue in cheek, like he often does. But there was a grain of truth to it also, which I came to appreciate over the next two days. “What’s a sawmill like this worth?” I asked him as he was assembling his Wood Mizer LT40. “Catch me on the right day and I’ll give it to you,” he answered with a smile. We worked for the next two days with that sawmill, and I don’t think he would have given it away, because it worked like a Swiss clock, and it was run by a master. Deane and his crane lifted our  black ash logs onto Ken's sawmill. Deane Hillbrand and Ken Peter worked as a team. It was a joy to be a small part of it. Deane would lift eight-foot-long logs onto the sawmill with his crane, and Ken would saw them up with his sawmill. I had the challenging job o...