Mike

Back during August of ’24, I cut a lot of firewood. Even before the two hurricanes that hit in September and October, I was still trying to clear the debris from last year, and the back of the property was still flooded. My neighbor helped me cut a large tree limb from a Live Oak that was leaning, and just moving it from the front yard to the back took a lot of doing. At one point, the middle of August, I started early in the morning, and by eleven the temperature rose to close to one hundred. I was splitting wood in the backyard. I wear a heartrate monitor that turns work into points and on a good day I can get 100-150 points but that day I was over 500 points when the device overheated and stopped working. So did I.The next day I moved some smaller stuff, but even without exertion my heartrate when up simply because of the heat. I drank a gallon of water every two hours, and still felt like I was dying of thirst. I ate a lot more than I usually do, and discovered snacking as a lifesaving ritual. I lost ten pounds in one week, and had to shut down for a while. When the final hurricane of this year, hit in October, there was simply no way to keep up with what needed to be done. The flooded part of the property expanded, and with that, more and more trees died, creating more and more work to do. I can stack wood up, and pile up branches, but there’s no safe place to burn anymore on this island. Worse, as if Summer needed any pepper, tick season now lasts from March until the first real cold spell, which is sometime in late December. Ticks are tiny, hard to see, impossible to prevent without a bath in some chemical, and they leave permanent scars as reminders they outlasted the dinosaurs, the comet that killed them, and likely they’ll survive the nuclear holocaust to come. At the time of this writing the water is still high, not seeping into the ground or evaporating, it rained last night, and the forecast is for rain this week. A giant pine has drowned and needs to be dropped before it decides to fall towards the shed or the house or on a dog. The cold isn’t keeping me from work as much as the water is. Yet when I can get out and work in the cold, my heartrate doesn’t go up as high, and I’m not as fatigued when I’m done. No mosquitoes, no ticks, no chiggers, and no stinging insects flying around. The undergrowth is less and not as grabby. Sweat arrives late, and sharpening the axe doesn’t seem to take as long. In my late thirties, I became more of an inside worker than outside. I never liked office work but the heat began to get to me. Now that I can pick and choose how much time I spend in the heat, and how much work I do, I find I enjoy the heat more than the cold. I have no idea why. It doesn’t make sense at all.

Take Care,Mike

(Many apologies to all, I’m not sure what happened when I set this up at 1am ~ Mikeco)