The Last Straw… Will Still Not Burn

What is the tipping point, I wonder, after which we start to make a concerted effort on some annoying minor thing? I have had trouble getting the fire to light in the morning, even using kindling-sized versions of the wood that was delivered by local woodsmen. Apparently their idea of “seasoned” is: it’s not still bleeding (or whatever trees do). If pressed, they might say, “Yeah, it’s a seasoned tree. I’ve seen it around the yard for a couple years… maybe it was upright and growing at the time, I don’t know… all these trees look alike.” Anyway, when I chop the logs into thinner strips, they sizzle, give off less steam, but they still don’t burn. What I have is an investment in my future, if I don’t freeze to death first.

Anyway, concerted effort: for weeks now, after the “fatwood” (imported from somewhere in Tennessee) gave out, I have scrounged every morning for a new combo of really dry scrap wood -- from my art supplies or left-over woodshop projects (or not so left over! when you’re desperate, the last few inches of that shelving board look really good) and chips that have been lying on the chopping area long enough to dry… and each day after several tries, I got it going. And then forgot about it… three days ago the tipping point was reached and I had to either buy some firestarters (yuk) or do some more concentrated chopping of wood that I know is dry… it’s like the moment when you realize there are more flies than picnickers at a picnic or something -- a more strenuous, over-arching plan of action is needed!

Rummaging back in the memory to my Girl Scout days, I recalled that one starts a fire with dry paper, maybe some wax paper, and the tiniest dry twigs you can find -- the tinder. Like building a little house of cards, those twigs are stacked either teepee style or log-cabin style (never thrown in big handfuls onto burning paper -- okay, sometimes...) so that enough air and flame can get between the twigs. Once they have “caught”, then the next size -- kindling -- goes on, carefully. Throwing them into the fire with enough force that they collapse your burning house of twigs and smother your fire is self-sabotage -- good Girl Scouts are patient. Good Girl Scouts are usually dressed when they’re trying this, so the cold damp winter air isn’t icing up their moving parts. Only after the kindling has caught can one confidently place the wrist-thick logs onto the fire (they have a name too, but heck -- it was 40 years ago!!) Anyway, the logical conclusion is that I need a stack of each size wood, nicely dried and ready to select from at 7am when my brain is still transmuting the coffee into thought.

Which is why yesterday’s sunshine found me going around the yard about a foot from the crabgrass, gathering every twig I could find and bending it to see how dry it was (the neighbor saw me scouring on hands and knees and again offered me his metal detector). Next step was to find suitable containers for about a million semi-dry twigs. Cardboard tends to soak up any wind-driven rain and would just get the twigs wet all over again. Plastic buckets are great, as long as no water at all gets into them, otherwise we have the swimming twigs syndrome, and get to wait another year to use them. I found a partial wood box (partial because I’d already used one side as kindling one desperate cold day) and piled the short bits in that. The canning pot is not going to be used until the fruit survives the birds and becomes jam, so I used that for the kindling. It looked kinda rustic, kinda Martha-Stewart-meets-old-Sears-catalog… I felt like I had addressed the problem.

Until the next morning. Dawn was peering in the window over my shoulder as I crumbled the paper, delicately placed some tinder on it -- the damn paper wouldn’t stay squished, so the “house” flew apart whether I tried teepee or log cabin. Finally just stuck them in the crevasses of the paper. Got the paper to light and blew on it a little to increase the heat - loved to hear that whoosh of fierce flames! Unfortunately, the tinder was just sitting there, like a showcase of non-flammable safety wood. Great for children’s furniture, but not a player in the woodfire competitions. The paper was almost burned up; had to get even a couple pieces to burn! Blew on it some more; the sound of fierce flame was heartening, but it ate up the last of the paper and then it was just tiny blinking embers and a pile of very thin twigs. What gives? Did I mistakenly pick up some of the petrified wood that this town was built on?? Do I need to get “hotter paper” in order to get these suckers to light? Reluctantly, I started again -- some newspaper, some old business letters, a bit of cardboard to really give the flames something to sink their teeth into… this time, the flames crackled immediately, and finally a twig or two caught. Carefully, I fed some kindling in, blew a little, then as the paper and cardboard disappeared, I desperately threw a few more pieces on -- they rolled to the other side of the stove, leaving the one twig that had deigned to catch burning forlornly, far from anything that it might influence. More tinder! I grabbed a handful of the twigs, reeds, bark, moss -- even straw from my broom! -- and piled it near the only burning twig… and put it out. At that point, I turned up the baseboard heater and went to make myself another pot of coffee. I know when the gods of fire have taken the morning off. Tomorrow, I will try dipping the damn pieces in cooking oil.

Wood'n Ya Know It...

The most difficult part about owning a house in the country are the distractions. These are not the same distractions that popped up in suburbia, where I might get distracted by a random car crash down the road, or the News 8 copters ranging overhead, making me wonder if there’s a standoff in the neighborhood. Or even the usual distractions that occur to anyone living within four walls: you use the bathroom, realize the damn toilet hasn’t been cleaned in several weeks, take a few moments on that, then realize that shining bowl makes the rest of the bathroom look dingy, and before you know it, you’ve completely forgotten that oatmeal cooking on the stove, now so burned that it can be chipped out and used to shim the uneven bookcase wobbling in the office.

No, this is where I go out to the garage for some firewood, then remember I split the axe handle yesterday chopping, so I have to take a few minutes to tape the handle with duct tape so that it can at least be used as a wedge, otherwise I will be trying to burn chunks of wood the size of the US budget, since I have gotten into a habit of making gourmet firewood: individually hand-chopping each piece as it is delivered to the stove. No shoddy bulk delivery for me! In fact, I tried chopping enough for at least a whole day, yesterday, and see where it left me -- a fractured axe and tingling in my wrists. I assume I will have to work up to this. By next winter, I should be able to manage a half cord of chopping. By next winter, I will have finally chopped the cord I’d had delivered this year. If the splinters haven’t worked their way into my bloodstream.

Woodpiles and stoves are one of the many ways that country folk are allowed to witness the great cycles of Nature: a tree falls on your truck, you pay someone to slice it up, you roll it to the woodpile and begin to pound it into fragments, you take those fragments into the woodstove and set fire to them, within hours they are ashes and you take the ashes out (waiting until they cool unless you are practicing to be a pyromaniac juggler), you put the ashes on the compost heap, and in spring you put the compost onto the garden, where you have a new seedling tree. In another hundred years, the cycle starts all over again. I realize that city dwellers aren’t as patient as “we” (after a month here, I can say that): they will likely be asking, “Why didn’t you get right to the point and just burn the tree when it broke your bloody truck?” True, it would have saved hours of labor and a hefty check to the woodsman… but on the other hand, it would have meant that instead of hauling the chunks of wood through the rain and snow to the insatiable stove, I would have had to turn up the thermostat on the baseboard heater and… now, wait. Let me think this out… oh, right -- I wouldn’t have witnessed a grand cycle of nature! And I’m looking forward to that second round, somewhere about 2108... if I’m still here….

But this brings me to a related topic, which was introduced by the exterminator as he went around drilling holes in my siding: the difference between men and woodstoves. I hadn’t actually looked at it as a comparison, but here’s what we came up with:

-- you have to feed them both
-- man usually easier to “light” than woodstove, but the stove keeps hot longer
-- both take up a lot of space in the living room and create mess that needs to be cleaned up after
-- both have to be careful their pipes don’t get clogged
-- can’t control the heat on either of them
-- eventually you have to do something with their ashes
-- you can count on the woodstove

Now - you try to get that quality of joke while sitting around your high-tech living room, watching the News 8 copters searching your neighborhood! You can‘t… though I guess there’s “men and computers”, or “men and washing machines” (think: spin cycle) or “men and cars”… okay -- I guess there’s potential enough for city and country. Now pardon me while I distract myself by dancing through the snowflakes - er -- going out for more firewood.