Late August Firewood Haul in Truckee

Firewood day. Tahoe Donner runs its sale the last days of August, and at $54 a cord plus tax the only catch is you load it yourself. The mix is red fir, white fir, Jeffrey pine, and lodgepole, cut into rounds about sixteen inches long — which means an hour of picking pieces off the pile and heaving them over the trailer rail one at a time.

Hitched the trailer to the Jeep and had the load home by midday, the box sitting noticeably lower on its axles than it did on the drive over. Donner Lake flat and blue through the pines the whole way, which made the sweating feel less like a chore.

Unloading was the other half of it. The wood went into the shed under the stairs, stacked against last year's leftovers, though by the end I was mostly tossing pieces at the pile and letting them land where they landed. Still a loose heap spilling toward the pavers when I called it.