Help yourself, why don't you?

Last Sunday we arrived at the wood to find someone had cut through the fence and taken most of a whole stack of birch logs which, rather foolishly perhaps, had been left in view of the road. Probably the best part of a cord of wood.

Now one way and another we've got quite a lot of wood. If they'd asked we'd have sold them some really cheap or even let them have some for nothing if they were really hard up. As it is they've taken stuff which was only felled a few weeks ago and won't be ready to burn for at least a year. And I had to spend half the afternoon mending the fence.

Now do people think that stacks of logs are just hanging around having magically just arrived? And you can just help yourself and cut down that pesky fence that gets in the way? Is it that people have so little connection with the countryside that they see woods as just in between places where you can dump your rubbish and take whatever you fancy because it's hanging around?

I'm still trying to work out people's attitudes to woods. If I cut my way through your garden fence and nicked your lawnmower no one would disagree that that was theft. Are people so divorced from our woods that they only see them as 'background' for walking the dog, belonging to everyone and no one where you can just help yourself to anything that's lying about? I hardly think so, people know when they are doing wrong, of course they do. But as far as woods are concerned, it seems that some people persuade themselves that somehow it's not really theft.