While it does have a furnace, the main room is best heated using the wood stove. In the winter this necessitates regularly carrying firewood from the wood shed outside to the small rack next to the stove. After the heating season is over there's more activity in the form of harvesting firewood (usually from trees on the property that have recently blown down and need to be cleaned up anyway), cutting to log length, and splitting the larger logs down to something that will fit into the stove. It is a lot of work, but it's also great exercise out in the fresh air, and if you enjoy that sort of thing like I do it is a lot of fun.
What I call the cabin lifestyle is mostly periods of physical activity alternating with lazing around reading a book, enjoying the scenery, or having a meal. Of course, having spent this past weekend living the cabin lifestyle, parts of my body are now fondly remembering the catheter, and how I'd lay around on the couch all day. Since the removal of the catheter, I've been steadily increasing my activity level until today when I ran into my current limitations.
A few weeks ago a fir tree blew over across one of the trails that we regularly walk on. This made it very difficult to traverse as it required doing the limbo under the trunk while trying to find a way through all the branches. Today I decided to see if I was well enough to cut up the tree, with mixed results.
While I did get the trail cleared enough to walk through, I only cut up the minimum amount of tree needed to accomplish that goal. There's still much more of the tree that will need to be cleaned up in the spring before I can drive the pickup truck down this trail.
There are two ways I could look at this. The first way was to note that a couple months ago I would have had no trouble cutting up the whole tree, so currently I'm only able to do about a quarter of what I'm used to doing. This would be called a results or goal oriented view and thinking that I didn't finish the job left me very depressed and focused on what I'm not able to do at the current time.
The other way to look at the situation is to note that I tried and actually did end up accomplishing something meaningful. It's not natural for me to look at things this way. It feels like getting a participation medal where the results don't matter, only that you tried. But a more zen way to describe it would be that it focuses me on what I can control: effort and having reasonable expectations. I had no way of knowing if my back would tolerate this, and while it did do better than expected, it's still not 100%.
It should also be noted that in any other year I'd wait until spring had arrived and the snow had melted before attempting this cleanup. After all, the six inches of snow adds another layer (no pun intended) of challenge to the cleanup. Did I mention that it required a quarter mile hike through the woods, up and down hills and over a couple streams to get here?
And of course the tree didn't cooperate either. There's a bit of a guessing game in the cut shown in the photo. Should the cut be top-down, expecting the log to fall down on the right side? Or bottom-up, expecting the log to fall down on the left side? I chose bottom-up for the final cut, which makes for a great action photo as you can see me crouching and lifting the saw to make the undercut.
It turns out I guessed wrong. The right side of the log decided to start falling and pinched the bar of the saw in the cut. Insert foul language here. I'm a quarter mile from any other tools and the only saw I have available is stuck in a tree. Trying to simply pull the saw out didn't work, it was more stuck than I am strong. Lifting the right end of the log to take the weight off with my right arm, while pulling the saw out with my left did the trick. But it also made my back complain.
When I'm healthy, I can use all my strength without hurting myself. What I'm pushing, pulling, or otherwise trying to move will either move in response to my best effort or it won't. My back is currently the weak link in the chain. If I try to use a majority of my strength in a manner it doesn't like, it will hurt and continue hurting for some time afterwards. On a good day that happens when trying to wrestle trees. On a bad day that happens leaning over the sink to spit out my toothpaste.
I'm making solid progress and daring to push myself to but not quite past my limits. In my mind, the cabin lifestyle is key to increasing my chances of making a full recovery. The periods of activity are good for building endurance, strength, and flexibility without the drudgery of working out in a gym (though I could probably use some of that as well). The periods of inactivity are ideal for resting and recovery. At no time am I watching TV and stressing out over the evening news, which it seems is something I do all too often in my normal life.
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