I taught a friend to split wood, and the last swing was his

Dan had never used an axe to split a log. Not badly, not once as a child, not even a small axe or a hatchet. Never.

So I showed him. Where to stand, how to hold it and where to grip. How to set it up above his head, how to bring it down, and where the axe should finish, which is squarely into the block beneath: an arc that keeps your legs out of it.

Then we worked up.

Small logs to start. Less dense wood, an easy split once the technique arrives. Four or five of them, with me watching and correcting as we went. Then, bigger logs. Somewhere in there he stopped needing me, so I let him work while I found more supply. The last one. A big one, and a combined effort seemed a fitting way to finish. Five strikes each, taking it in turns, with some play to see how would deliver the final blow. I would guess a hundred strikes in total. It went on long enough that splitting it stopped being the point and finishing it became it.

Dan's swing was the one that split it.

What was interesting was that nobody has ever asked me for any of this.

I learned it from a man who has been cutting wood for years. I have never thought of it as something I know. It sits below the level of things I would list about myself, by a long way. Nobody has asked me for it, I have never offered it, and if Dan had not come for the weekend it would have stayed exactly there.

The wood is stacked outside the garage now, waiting for winter to heat the house my family lives in. It was never the point of the afternoon. It is a useful by-product of something my accomplished, successful best mate will file as a few hours of fun, as someone who now lives in an urban environment, and never now needs to chop the logs himself.