The evening
sun was sitting low on the hills as I walked away from home, my breath rose in
white plumes as warm met cold. Two dogs bounded away from my feet their breath
too rose like a steam training leaving a lonely station. My hands are thrust
deep in my jacket pockets, a woollen hat is pulled down low yes it is cold. The
lack of wind makes the cold seep into my joints I walk faster trying to warm
up.
Slung across
my back is a netting pack containing a small axe, which bumps on my spine as I
walk, its rhythm is like a metronome counting my foot fall. The dogs reach the
pine trees before me and run deeper into the rows on a bed of brow needles.
With every step the day falls from my shoulders problems are lost and I begin
to stand taller I can smell the wind, the trees, the ground, and the dogs. My
senses heighten, movement is seen, and sounds become clearer.
As I walk I
pick up pine cones and drop them in the bag on my back. At a fallen limb I stop,
slip the bag from my shoulders and remove the small axe, to be correct a
tomahawk. Slipping off its leather cover I pause to look at the axe head. I
beers the marks of time I can remember when it was shining new sitting on the
shelf of Shirtcliff’s store. I saved my pocket money for months to make this
little axe mine. The tomahawk has stood the test of time for over forty years it
has cut my kindling. I have carried it on countless camping trips; it was part
of my tool kit when I worked as a fencer.
Now as I
swung the axe knocking cones from the branch I remember the pride and thrill of
a young boy who at the age of eleven was experiencing for the first time the
value of hard work and the tangible reward it produces. Every time I oil the
handle or file the blade I see time, life in a tool, every mark on it has a
story. I can compare this little axe to my skin, aged by time and hard work; we
are a team inseparable and reliant on each other.
Later in the
evening, as I open the fire box throwing in a cone I pause and think back to
the young boy at the store counter did, or could I have ever imaged how far we
would both come?
