There's an eternal and timeless ritual that I indulge in throughout the winter, and on this sunny and not-quite-freezing day, I was at it again. The endeavor, of course, is the endless quest for firewood, and, because our town is blessed with lots of trees and tree-managers, especially from the power company and the highway department, whose charge is to prevent hardwoods and softwoods from taking out the electric lines and roads, respectively, there's often a lot of wood on the rights-of-way. I've never checked the legalities, but I know that according to local custom, that wood is there for the taking. I'm definitely one of the takers, so, at a new cutting site, I loaded up the truck with anything I could lift. While I was "working," a duck landed in a tree to watch my toil... OK, it is a genuine rubber duck. I'm told it was put there by one of the work crews to mark progress... or, perhaps, to bring smiles to onlookers.