Rule #4: Dura la vita del boscaiolo.

Difficult, the life of a lumberjack.

What makes me say this? I return to Rome, where I spent my first four days in Italy, before coming to the WWOOF farm, Couch Surfing with 44 year old Rodolfo. Rodolfo was a wise man. We had many a deep conversation on a wide range of topics…in fact, in some ways I am his American alter-ego. But there was one thing about Rodolfo that I never quite understood. Daily, perhaps used as a device to transition from one topic to another or to close a thought, he would say “Dura la vita del boscaiolo”. Our conversations, of course, never fell upon the topic of lumberjacks—or lumber anything—but he continued to insist, always bringing up this lumberjack.

I didn’t think much of it; I laughed it off nonchalantly, as he persisted the truth and importance of his statement. My first day on Italy WWOOF farm number one, I understood. Our first task today was to use a mini saw to cut down giant stalks of […?] for food for the bunnies, our second to cut back thorny overgrowth with machetes. It was my job to do clean up by cutting the thorn/tree stalks close to the ground, and while explaining the task, Leah, the other WWOOFer, said to me, “try to cut them as close to the ground as possible. That way, it will take longer for them to grow back and for us to have to do this all again.” It finally hit me: the life of a lumberjack is difficult. Not only is it backbreaking labor…it never ends. It will be the same labor with the same reward day in and day out… as soon as the plants grow back we’ll be (or the next WWOOFers will be) out there doing this again. It is physically and mentally difficult. This is the life of anyone who works closely with the natural world. This is the life of the boscaiolo. How strangely inappropriate for a city boy from Rome to use this phrase as his shtick, but how appropriate for him to have said it to me fresh before my experience as, in a sense, a boscaiolo myself!