Chores were religion in our house. Splitting wood, stacking wood, hauling wood

Chores were religion in our house. Splitting wood, stacking wood, hauling wood — entire weekends swallowed by the rhythm of survival.

I didn’t think of it as “character-building” at the time. I thought of it as just life — what everyone must be doing, surely. The cyclical labor of keeping a house warm in Wisconsin taught me something: that effort has weight, texture, sound.

When I lift my son now, or carry lumber into my studio, I sometimes hear the echo of those early winters: the axe sinking into the log, the stove ticking as it heated, my dad’s boots crunching on snow.

Work was not an abstract concept. It was a soundscape. A mythology. A way of knowing the world.