Those memories of chopping wood

Back home in the riverside town, a unique warmth came to my face. After dinner in summer, I made a cup of tea and habitually came to the balcony near the river, leaning back on the bamboo chair and reading. This is the most relaxing and happy time of my day.

Suddenly, the breeze blew and a faint fragrance came to the nose. Put down the book and look for fragrance. Yes, the orchids in the balcony flowerpot are in bloom! In those clusters of dark green wicker leaves, the branches have been sticking out. On the pale yellow flower branch, there is a bud the size of a turquoise wheat grain. The white pedicel is dotted with white flowers with red stripes. Looking in turn, Milan, pomegranate, asparagus, rose, camellia, jasmine and canna are swaying in the breeze.

Look up, the sky after the rain, blue sky and white clouds.

Bow your head, flood the Minjiang River, and rush forward.

From a distance, on both sides of the Minjiang River, the mountains are undulating and lush.

With the movement of my neck, my eyes fixed on a big banyan tree faintly visible at the foot of the mountain on the other side. I know there is an old stone arch bridge under the big banyan tree, which is called "Tonggu Bridge" by the locals. Crossing Tonggu Bridge is my hometown Xuanhua Dam, which is the former site of Xuanhua County in Ming Dynasty. According to legend, "flowers versus bronze drums" was a great local scene at that time. Looking at the "Tonggu Bridge" in the distance, my mind opened up the memories of going up the mountain to get firewood when I was a child.

Xuanhua Dam, my hometown, is a flat dam of about three or four square kilometers near the south bank of Minjiang River. In the era of planned economy, there are mainly four cash crops here: rape, peanuts, sun-cured tobacco and sugarcane. Because it is a flat dam without mountains, there is no forest without mountains. Therefore, the farmers who lived on the dam at that time did not need enough fuel for cooking, except for the orange stalks of crops, that is, chopping wood on the mountains on the north bank of the Minjiang River.

I remember when I was about twelve or thirteen years old, the first time I went up the mountain to cut wood with my mother was a Sunday. After breakfast that morning, my mother took me and set out with other villagers in the village. First, each person gave the boatmen 30 cents to cross the river and the Minjiang River by boat, then crossed the "Tonggu Bridge" and climbed two or three miles of mountain roads to the mountain. On the mountain, people find their own places to cut wood. Like an adult, I waved a sickle and cut a kind of firewood called "bracken grass". When I cut it almost, I tied the firewood into two bundles with a rope, put in a "fiber load" and went home with the firewood. Because it was the first time to go up the mountain to cut firewood, my mother was afraid that I couldn't carry it, so the burden of firewood tied to me was very small. Nevertheless, I still couldn't keep up with the pace of the adults and was soon left far behind. At this time, my mother always puts down the basket after every vacation (women chop wood and men pick it) and comes back to help me pick it. Even so, when I got home, my shoulders were still red and swollen, and I couldn't touch the "fiber load" for several days. I haven't dared to cut wood with adults for more than ten days.

In the future, as long as there is a school holiday, I will follow my mother up the mountain to cut firewood. I remember once, in order to show a man's "manhood", my mother said enough when tying firewood. I didn't say enough, and I didn't want to tie it bigger. But when I came back with firewood, I felt relaxed at first, but soon I felt that the burden on my shoulders was getting heavier and heavier until it hurt. Because I cut two loads of firewood that day (in order to save time, sometimes I cut two loads at a time, first pick one load to the front, and then come back to pick the second load, so I can pick two loads of firewood alternately to go home), so I left home in the morning and didn't get home until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Although my mother gives me a lift home from time to time, I still feel hungry and tired on the way, and gradually I can't support it. Until a few hundred meters away from home, I couldn't bear it anymore. I sat on the ground and tears fell unconsciously. My mother came home with two baskets of firewood. When she came back to help me pick it, she asked, "Why are your eyes red?" I fought back my tears and said, "It was sweat that flowed into my eyes."

When I am older, I will go up the mountain to cut wood with other children in the village. A group of children learned to climb a tree in order to cut wood more resistant to burning and climb to cut branches. Generally speaking, I am better at climbing trees than many children. When other children climb trees, they should make a "foot cover" with rope and put it on their feet when climbing trees. With the help of "foot cover", they can climb trees around the trunk with their feet, while I can climb trees without "foot cover". In order to save time and effort when climbing trees and chopping wood, we also invented a method of "grafting trees", that is, when climbing a tree and cutting branches from it, we don't have to climb the second tree, but hold the trunk of the cut branches tightly and shake it in the direction of the nearest other tree. When the body and branches can grasp the branches of the neighboring trees, we will free up a hand to hold the branches of the neighboring trees until. When the branches on the second tree are cut down, the next tree is "grafted" in the same way until the cut branches prepare enough firewood for one day. But "connecting trees" must have one condition, that is, the distance between several adjacent trees to be "connected" cannot be too far. Otherwise, after climbing the tree, shaking can't reach the adjacent tree, and it may fall down. In reality, there have been such misfortunes. It's a distant cousin of mine. Because he was too far away from the neighboring tree when picking up the tree, he couldn't reach the trunk of the neighboring tree no matter how he shook it, so he had to grab the branches of the neighboring tree and move there. As a result, I don't know whether the branches couldn't bear his weight, or whether the elasticity of moving from one tree to another made him fall from a tree more than 20 meters high and never woke up. Tragedy just happened!

Due to the endless stream of people chopping firewood on the dam on both sides of Minjiang River in my hometown, I went to Qiu Lai in spring, and year after year, the firewood resources on the mountain gradually dried up. Looking up, the firewood on the slope was cut down, revealing a piece of yellow land; The branches of this tree have been stripped bare, leaving only a bare trunk and a few tops. Cutting wood is becoming more and more difficult, so people will go further into the mountains, as far as ten miles. At this time, the production teams that were chopped firewood wrote a notice prohibiting foreigners from entering the mountains to cut firewood, and sent rangers to patrol the mountains. Anyone caught stealing firewood will be confiscated, as well as firewood cutting tools and fines. Even so, sometimes, in order to save time and effort, woodcutters often secretly want to go into the mountains to cut wood. If it is difficult to cut wood, they even cut trees. I remember it was a summer morning. A group of more than a dozen boys of fifteen or sixteen crossed the Minjiang River and went up the mountain to cut firewood as usual. When we were halfway, the sky suddenly thundered and it rained heavily. At this time, everyone is unwilling to return empty-handed. I don't know who said, "Ha, isn't this weather for stealing firewood?" As a result, everyone got into the nearby forest, climbed trees, and cut down trees if they couldn't climb trees. Perhaps the momentum of more than a dozen people acting together alarmed the surrounding farmers and only heard "caught, someone stole firewood!" " "Under the shouts, a bunch of us fled everywhere, jumping from rock to rock, jumping from ridge to ridge, and birds were scattered around.

I went straight to the edge of the Minjiang River. Looking back, no one chased me, but when I counted the number, I lost two partners. So, everyone chose the biggest two to go back and look for. Everyone was dumbfounded when they eagerly saw two partners coming back to look for them and carrying two others to the front.

It turned out that the two fallen partners were injured. One is that when jumping off the rock and landing, one foot stepped on the sharp bamboo stubble left by people after cutting bamboo, and the bamboo stubble penetrated his instep from the baseboard! The other one also twisted when he jumped off the rock and landed, causing a calf fracture! At that time, at a young age, I kept thinking, if one day we burn coal like city people and never go up the mountain to cut wood again, how wonderful it would be!

Two years ago, I occasionally went to the countryside and went to the mountains. I saw all the trees covered with firewood, and the dense branches on the tall trees. I once had a question. The villagers are very tired all year round. Not only do they not have enough to eat, but why are they so short of firewood? When I went back to my hometown, I saw that when the villagers cooked, they mostly used biogas or burned honeycomb coal. Some people also use canned liquefied gas, rice cookers and electric frying pans, supplemented by a small amount of crop straw. I seem to understand something from it.

In my childhood memory, it seems that the Minjiang River floods every year. Whenever the flood season comes, the villagers are helpless and helpless when they witness a large area of crops and houses flooded. I think the frequent floods in those years may have something to do with the bare hillsides on both sides.

Since1990s, the Minjiang River has never been submerged. Looking at the lush mountains on both sides of the Minjiang River, watching the Minjiang River rushing eastward and becoming docile downstairs, I prayed in my heart that for our future generations, we would like our sky to be bluer, our slopes to be greener and our rivers to be clearer!