And honestly one of the most satisfying things in my life, for so many reasons.

Summers are spent culling dying ponderosas from the forest, cutting them up with the chainsaw into woodstove-length bolts, stacking them in long snaking stacks to dry and cure, splitting last year’s now cured bolts, and moving that ready, split wood in another long snaking stack, this one closer to the house.

This culling of trees sighing towards the end of their lives helps the health of the forest. Or sometimes it’s a little colony of mistletoe that’s taken over a half acre up on the north facing ridge behind the barn, and those trees need to come down before it spreads too far. Whatever the reason, the trees are chosen carefully and thoughtfully, and this work is tending to the land, not extracting from her.

I’ve always had a hard time getting on a treadmill or picking up heavy weights, but huffing and straining and pumping my lungs and muscles pushing the wheelbarrow up the road and lifting and stacking and splitting feels vital and natural and great. It’s a useful use for my body’s strength. In winter, I know exactly where my heat comes from, and exactly how much work it took for my human body to harvest and process and produce. And that is deeply satisfying.

It’s been years since I’ve lived this close to the land. I kept trying other doors, throwing myself down on other floors. Now I can’t seem to leave her. I feel tethered, bound, and promised. There is the deep call from the Earth herself, and even the ET’s told me, when they came to me and shocked my ontology, that in order for me to stay well (as in, not sick, cancer healed), I needed to return to the blueprint of me. That I came in with a specific frequency and it has to do with Nature and slowness and peace and connection to trees and bees and animals and the blue southwest sky, and I should return to that, sooner rather than later. And of course since I was 5 they’ve been telling me that the Earth is in trouble and to do something about it, always urgent, always dramatic, always pushing, leaving me sweating and heart-pounding and mission-focused but unsure of the mission.

They tell me now, just yesterday, they said it’s urgent and I must stop doing anything unsustainable. That the world is crying and dying and burning and so now all I want is to be with her and do what I can. This is my calling and mission. And I’m deeply aware that I only get to do it here in this valley where I grew up, because my parents heard that same call almost 50 years ago and came to this raw land and built from scratch a garden and a dome and with their own hands, and that it all moved through their physical bodies, those acts of creation. It was all huffing and blood pumping and muscles pushing and trying and failing and trying again and now I get to walk in and plant in their already-fenced garden and I don’t have to draw water from the well, just flip a switch that turns on the juice from the solar panel and the little pump does the work. I can only be here because they started something. They created something real and true and I’m the next generation. It feels like real wealth to me, and I’m so very grateful for my close and bright ancestors who bore me into their future and gave me the gift of this valley and this life.

I am here with my feet on the ground, living on her and with her, as close to regenerative reciprocity as I can get. There is nowhere else to go. There is nothing else to do. I am here, I am here, I am here. And stacking firewood is holy work.