I go through this every year. At some point, hopefully, I’ll learn to trust the numbers and relax. Thus far this year, we’ve been burning firewood from last year. That means we heated October and November without touching this year’s wood. The other day we exhausted that supply, and I loaded up the wood crib from the new wood for this year.

This will be our fourth winter here. We have learned from experience that we burn just over three cords of wood in a heating season. Behind the house, in two big stacks, is the pre-measured wood, stacked neatly, ready for this season. There’s a certain confidence, looking out the window to see those two big piles of split wood–each of these piles is four feet wide, twelve feet long and four to five feet high. It’s a generous three cords.

The wood crib, our storage area just outside the back door, holds between a third and a half cord. And that’s a good thing. But it means I’ve just pulled a significant chunk of firewood from the winter’s stores. It’s a big bite, and it shows. (Though we’ve only just moved it to a more convenient location…it’s not like I ate it or anything.) Of course, I panic. Will we have enough?

You know, some of the forecasters are predicting a particularly cold winter. (Though so far, they’ve been wildly off the mark.) And, this year, a percentage of that wood is beech, instead of ash. Ash is denser and has significantly more heating heft than beech. I look at that woodpile and wonder if there’s enough.

I do it every year.

It doesn’t even seem to help that we have already cut and brought in most of the wood needed for the following year. Because, poaching on next year’s wood would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, wouldn’t it?

I seem to have invented a whole new category of seasonal anxiety. The woods from which we harvest is directly behind us. It’s unlikely that, in any given year, we’d be able to exhaust the supply. When I purchased the property, some 30 years ago, I specifically selected it, in part, because the hardwoods section was big enough for our needs, without ever cutting a live tree. For this year, we can continue to bring in more wood, until the snow is too deep for the Kubota. Beyond that, we have an ice-fishing sled with which we could continue to haul in more if needed (and it’s all downhill). But that’s not really the issue. Needless anxiety is the issue.

The weather has turned colder, and we have our first real snow that “sticks.” To work through my needless anxiety, I asked Rick for his outdoor priorities with what’s left of the outdoor work season. Without hesitation he answered that there’s a couple more trees that have fallen and he’d like to cut them and bring them in.

I guess it’s contagious. Sigh. We do enjoy harvesting firewood–so it’s not a problem. At some point, we’ll be able to relax, knowing that there’s enough. We should be there, now. We won’t run out.

Maybe fraught elections aren’t enough. Pandemics aren’t enough. We’re humans and we find reasons to worry.