An Unhurried Sense of Time

“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.” —Bonnie Friedman

I saw this quote recently, and it hit home.

I’ve written on the blog before about how much we value unstructured time here on the homestead. We work hard—some days harder than we feel we can manage—but the primary difference is that we do it on our own terms, which most often means our own time.

A recent example of this is the on-going firewood harvest.

leaning tree

The broken tree. Note line of come-along to try to pull it off the supporting branches (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

I joke that I’m still cutting last winter’s wood; this comes rather closer to the mark than I’m comfortable with. Last summer and autumn I devoted more time to the play I directed (see The Lion in Winter) than I did to the firewood harvest. As a result, we heated the cabin with a small, ever-dwindling supply of the previous winter’s wood, and a big dead tree I felled last autumn, then cut on an as-needed basis all winter (see 30/30″ and Whittling Away). After that tree, I had my eyes on another tree near it.

The second tree broke on the bole a couple of years ago. It fell a short distance before hanging up against other trees, right above our trail. While I predicted, correctly, that it wouldn’t fall farther, it worried Michelle and Aly. I planned to cut it to ease their concerns, but also learned that it had died and dried, providing more seasoned firewood close to the cabin.

Aly and I cut the curved base with a two-person Swede saw a few months ago. While an excellent start, we realized that it was as well secured in the surrounding trees as I suspected. Even severed at the base, it wouldn’t easily go anywhere.

Even so, we don’t take it for granted. We set a warning cone in the center of the trail just before the place the tree hangs over the path, and we pass under it as quickly as possible, just in case. Other than that, I rely on our wealth of unhurried time to do the job carefully and well.

safety cone

One of the warning cones that washed ashore from the deck of a cruise ship, placed to remind us to avoid lingering under the tree (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

I did try to rush the job yesterday. Aly has been away at training for her new job, and we’ve all done little things to welcome her back. I had hoped that my contribution would be dropping that tree so it wouldn’t still loom over the trail once she got home. Typically, all I managed to do was to make it less stable than before.

But now, an unhurried sense of time returns to the rescue. Aly comes home today; I’ve warned her that the tree may be less stable, but I’m not going to try to bring it down until after she comes home. Besides, it’ll be safer to have someone on the premises before I work on it any further.

This is one of many examples where our unhurried sense of time makes us wealthy. Ms Friedman seems to share our perspective, and certainly put it in better words than I could.

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2 Responses to An Unhurried Sense of Time

  1. Linn Hartman says:

    cut a big tree here on the place clear threw and it just stood there – had to put a line around it and pull with my old van to get it to come down – becareful messing with those trees – we have a lot of accidents around here with folks cutting trees – things can go wrong in a hurry

  2. Mark Zeiger says:

    Linn, I don’t know why it never occurred to me how incredibly well balanced trees are. They seem to be designed to stay upright! Seems incredible, but true! I wish I could pull a vehicle up to this one and pull it down, that would be great!

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