I never would have admitted to this, if I had not discovered that other seemingly normal people feel the same way. I think of my chainsaw as a friend.
The orange chainsaw in the photo is my second Stihl. The first one burned when one of Bluebonnet Electric Co-op's poles fell on a neighbor's land and started a brush fire that ended up burning down my house, workshop, chicken pens, rabbit hutches, and storage sheds. Luckily, I was living in the city at the time, so no one was killed or injured, except possibly the pack rat who had set up housekeeping under a futon (I hope the little creature smelled the smoke and got away in time).
Anyhow, when I lived at Altamira, having a nice big stack of firewood always made me feel secure, like having plenty of beans and corn stored for the winter, or having plenty of money saved up. I hate being cold. In fact, I have such a fear of being cold, one would think I'd frozen to death in a former lifetime and still carried the memory of it. There's something especially comforting about having a fire blazing in a box in my home. It's much nicer than a gas space heater, and infinitely nicer than central heat. I love almost everything about wood burning stoves. Even having to build up the fire in the morning isn't bad at all, because I always shovel out some of the ashes to make room for more wood, and there are always glowing hot coals mixed in with the ash. The bucket of warm ashes is a marvelous foot warmer.
Back to the chainsaw - since the chainsaw makes it possible to cut up much more wood in a give amount of time than I would be able to cut using a hand saw and ax, I've developed quite a fondness for it. I felt ... do I dare put this down in writing? ... incomplete without a chainsaw after my old one burned.
I think the photo will be too small to show another friend of mine, but when the photo is enlarged, you can see Alex the Savannah cat lying in his favorite spot by the stove. He's in the background, between the plastic bucket of wood and the stove.
