How to Split Wood With an Axe

For the first twelve years of my life — from 1962 until 1974 — I lived in this amazing place in upstate New York named Sanitaria Springs. It wasn’t a town — it was barely a village — but it was a great place to be a kid and an amazing place to grow up.

The town was originally named Osborne Hollow and later changed its name when, in 1892, Dr. Sylvester Kilmer wanted a location for his health sanitarium and chose the area because of its natural phosphate springs. But before he started construction he convinced the town to change the name to Sanitaria Springs — if you were sick would you want to go to Osborne Hollow? A sanitarium was built in addtion to a hotel — which is the house my parents later bought and where I grew up — as well as a bottling plant and stores.

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The sanitarium fell under disrepair after the good doctor’s death — who actually claimed to have taken the cure to cancer to his grave. Then the sanitarium closed but the town moved on.

By the time I came along remnants of the old days were still there. The place where my dad dragged our garbage cans out for pickup was the old horse trough for the hotel and at my cousin’s house up the street were the original stone steps where horse and buggies would pull up to let off their passengers.

It was a place all its own. Long before the highway came in, it was rare and hidden and all ours. Where fields became baseball diamonds, gravel pits became swimming holes and barns became haunted houses.

It’s just a ghost town now. Just a name printed on EXIT 4, off Route 88 South and although I think the fire station is still there as well as a few houses and a chain gas station popped up ten years ago or so,  the place I remember — Shirley’s Store, The Post Office, The Grange, The School, my parents fish store, are all either empty buildings are gone completely. Some say it was the highway that killed the town. Others said it would have died anyway but it  doesn’t matter. What matters are the memories and all of them are good.

And one of my favorite memories were the ones of my cousin Chris McAvoy. And although I loved my cousin Brad, I idolized his big brother Chris and still remember many of the things he taught me about camping and hiking and of being a man. One thing Chris taught me — while we were building go carts from flower boxes we had stolen from our house — was how to use a hammer and how to use an axe. And he did so by telling me one rule — the same rule I passed on to my kids — that makes it all make sense.

And that rule is this.

 Let the tool do the work, not you. Hold the hammer low, swing and let that weight of the hammer or the axe do the job.

HOW TO SPLIT WOOD WITH AN AXE.

Find a stump. Placing the wood on top of something is the way to do it. It’s also safer, so you don’t have to bring the axe down farther.

Place wood long ways up. Make sure the wood is steady.

Take a solid stance. Place your feet at shoulders length.

Swing your axe around … Keep your grip midway until you bring the axe around and are starting back down with it. Then move your hands to the base and bring the weight off the axe head down on the wood. This is where you’re letting the axe do the work.

Rinse and repeat.