| Don't Think About It |
| By Elliott C. |
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http://www.ee0r.com/ |
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When you're cutting wood, there's not a lot to think about. You have to pay attention to what the saw's doing, so you can't let your mind wander far from the business at hand. So, when you do think, it tends to be about wood. 46 years of cutting wood and you tend to get a little philosophical about it. |
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Branches have rings too. Most people don't think about that, but they have rings just like the trunk does. The knots of different branches start further in on the trunk, too. Strip the branches off enough trees and you start to think about the years the tree decided to start making each branch. I didn't know when I took that job after college how it would all end up. Most times you just cut off the branch and don't think about it. |
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See, now here's what people think about. The seasons produce different densities of wood, so over the years this cycle of growth causes rings in the wood, in the tree. This one's pretty young, really. I have a few old trees here on the property, but she loved those old trees so much I mostly cut younger ones. Women are supposed to outlive men, you know. Sometimes they don't, but you don't think about things like that when you get married. |
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Here's another thing: the rings get fewer and closer together as you cut up the tree. Most people don't think about that, either. I t makes sense, the farther up the tree you go, the newer the growth, so there's not as many rings. Newer growth is more flexible. There's less to back it up. From the house, you can watch the tops of the trees sway in the wind. In the storms, sometimes one will snap, but mostly they just whip back and forth in the wind. Tormented. Anyway, on nice days like today I don't like to think about stormy weather. |
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Then there's the drying and the aging of the wood. It takes a year or two for the wood to season into something you can really use. It takes a while to build a respectable wood pile that you know can get you through the worst winters. Only people who depend on wood fires to keep them warm really think about it. If you don't keep at it, a bad winter can just clean you out, and using up wood too early is horrible on account of the smoke. It's enough to bring tears to your eyes. |
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Sometimes I wish I could just cut the wood, and burn it, and not think about it. Nowadays I think about it a lot though. I think about the growth of the tree, and how I turn the tree into fire. I think about the long process that ends in ash, and my part in it. |
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