Personal Narrative Essay: The Oak Tree

For as long as I can remember my great-grandparents have owned a wood burning stove to heat their house. My great-grandpa, my mother, my brother, and I had always been the ones to retrieve and split the wood for their stove. Since my great-grandpa and mother have gotten older, the responsibility of this laborious task has been handed down to my brother, Griffin, and myself. Retrieving and splitting wood is a long, tiring, and cold process. First, as with most things we must start at the source, the tree. We have to select a tall oak tree from the woods on my grandparents farm and cut it down. Cutting the tree down is one of the most dangerous parts of splitting wood, because if I fall the tree the wrong way it could land on the tractor, trailer, or me. Since I am older at first I was the one responsible for wielding the chainsaw that fell the trees. The chainsaw is not too heavy, but after operating it for a long period of time my arms begin to cramp intensely. My mother never quite feels comfortable letting Griffin handle the chainsaw, but I let him anyways. My arms would start to cramp, and he thoroughly enjoys defying my mother. We play rock paper scissors to see who gets to cut down the tree because it is our favorite part. When the tree falls, we always scream timber together as loud as we can. Since we are …show more content…
By this point we both feel the toll of the repetitious process of loading and unloading. One of us stands on the ground and tosses the sections of split wood to the other. We usually end up fighting at this point too. Whoever is on the trailer will miss a log, smashing his toe and blame it on the thrower. The catcher of the logs is usually slower because he has to catch and stack the logs; whereas, the other just has to grab and throw. Whichever of us ends up hurt that particular time usually doesn 't stay mad long. It is inevitable that the other will have the same thing happen to them at some point that