Wood, lies and winter warmth

We are past the Solstice, now, and losing daylight at more than three minutes a day. Soon it will be six minutes, an hour every 10 days -- the downhill slide to winter, the yearly race to get to equal daylight and darkness in time for the Equinox. It has been a cold summer anyway and well into June after a rain you could see new snow on the higher mountain peaks. What always comes to mind as it begins to get darker is firewood. There is something to the feeling of security a nice pile of firewood brings, and, as one friend put it: “Here a man is judged by the size of his firewood pile.”

With the cost of fuel oil so high, a lot more firewood will be burned this winter. There is some pleasure and satisfaction about doing firewood, too. Henry David Thoreau wrote about it: He said firewood warms you twice, once when you cut it, and once when you burn it. That is a treasured quote from Thoreau’s Walden. But to anyone who has ever really cut firewood, it exposes Thoreau as a fraud. Twice? TWICE? Let’s see:

You cut a tree or maybe wrestle a blowdown--ONE

You buck it into lengths that will fit into your stove -- TWO

You move it and haul it to your cabin -- THREE

You split it -- FOUR

You stack it carefully to let air circulate so it dries -- FIVE

And, finally, you burn it -- SIX

The guess is Thoreau had his wood delivered and maybe he split it himself because as you can see, the count is more like six, and that’s only if things go perfectly. To begin with some of those steps could last for days. A new degree of warmth is added with each complication that arises -- like the time you lost control of your red sled and the whole pile went flying down the hill spewing logs through the alders.

Or the little pile you leave to split when you are quitting smoking, so when the tension gets to be too much, you can go take it out on the wood. (A definition of maturity -- when you learn to plan ahead for your childish tantrums). Oh, and then there was the time you were pulling the sled full of wood and the dog stepped on the back of your snowshoe and you went down the hill along with the sled and the wood.

Yes, there is a lot of warmth in firewood, Thoreau aside, not the least of which is the satisfaction of seeing that wealth of wood stacked neatly against the coming winter.

Now, where is that woman with the chainsaw?

Here is an interesting guide to firewood, value of different species, and tips on seasoning: http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html