FIREWOOD IV: PRODUCTION

The stove is eating through our woodpile like a starving beaver. My distress grows with each trip to the shed as I watch formerly towering stacks of dry wood dwindle away. After weeks of bitterly cold rain, a severe snowstorm blanketed the region, followed by a cold snap with temperatures into the teens. We’ve been burning the stove around the clock. According to the weather service, the future holds more of the same. “The good news,” I report to Stacy, with forced optimism, “is that we’ve only burned half our wood.” Then, under my breath, “The bad news is, we’re less than a third of the way through winter.”

Our current wood production, which we won’t burn until next winter, is off to a promising start. Piles of rounds from a big fall cutting season line the yard, and each morning, I grab the maul and split a few before starting work. On weekends, the kids and I stack the split wood in crisscross patterns to dry. If it gets windy and more trees come down, I’ll still go out and cut, but for the most part, wintertime is splitting season.

I have plenty of incentive to split wood before work. The average winter temperature in my unheated office hovers around forty degrees, and twice this month it has dropped enough that I had to break ice stalagmites from the sink. A quick chopping session gets the blood moving before I sit down at my desk. Maybe you’ve heard the old saying about firewood warming you twice – when you split it and when you burn it? In my experience, it’s more like five times: cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, and carrying it to the house all produce more than a little body heat. Add in the actual burning, and we’re up to six. That’s a lot of warmth from one log.

A friend (and fellow wood rat) once wondered aloud why people spend money on both presplit cordwood delivery and gym memberships. I said it must save them time, and he pointed out that going to the gym isn’t without impact on the day planner. True. On the other hand, guys who spend time in the gym tend to look better without shirts on than I do. And their workouts carry significantly less risk of ending with a hand-forged Scandinavian ax head imbedded in their shins. I’m okay with that. I just have to work carefully and keep my shirt on.

Right now, though, I’m concerned with this year’s wood supply. A convergence of factors – the cold weather, my desire to have a warmer house (which seems to be increasing as I get older) and fishing too much last year – has created something of an inventory shortfall. Of course, it’s not like we’re going to freeze. We can always crank up the furnace, which we’re already doing at a rate directly proportional to the woodpile shrinkage, but it feels like cheating. More importantly, running the furnace 24/7 would put a dent in our bank account I’m not sure we could repair. Somehow, I’m going to have to find that rarest of winter commodities in our dripping forest: dry, ready-to-burn trees. I need a miracle.

A month ago, my friend Travis, in the process of showing off his new, state-of-the-art, all-steel peavey (a lever-and-swinging hook contraption for moving logs around), casually mentioned that he might know where to find some dry timber. I let it pass, not wanting to sound too eager and unsure of his firewood expertise. For all I knew, he could be a greenwood burner. I might have been a little jealous of the gleaming peavey, too. Then the conversation got a little more serious. We debated the merits of full-skip chain-saw chains (fewer cutting teeth, higher speed, more danger) and moved on to a maul vs. wedge discussion. Finally, I asked, “What do you think of hemlock?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Hate it,” he declared. Okay, then.

“So, about that dry wood…” I asked, trying to sound as if I could take it or leave it. “Yeah,” he said, “I think it’s good to burn now, but it’s ugly. I mean, big, old gnarly firs that’ve been down for three years. In a huge pile.” Then he brightened: “We’ll definitely need the peavey.” He said he’d call when he was ready, but I didn’t hold my breath.

Travis calls just as I’m loading the woodstove and fighting to tamp down my desperation over our meager wood supply. I’m still skeptical of finding dry wood on the ground anywhere in western Washington, but I grab my cutting gear and drive to the site through a light flurry of snow.

I can see that he was right about at least one thing: It’s ugly. And dangerous. Travis is standing on the road when I arrive, looking up at a logjam of enormous second-growth fir trees, each trunk held off the ground by others and clearly under tension in multiple directions. No wonder nobody’s claimed them.

We walk around the pile several times, trying to figure out the angles and pressure points. Gradually, a strategy for dismantling the logjam becomes clear, like the solution to a complicated equation. First, using a measuring stick and pruning saw, we mark 16-inch lengths along all the exposed logs. Then I climb up to the top of the pile with a light chain saw to cut away limbs while Travis clears space at ground level with his big saw. When the top trees are free of branches, we use the peavey to roll them down off the pile and into cutting position.

Snow keeps falling, and soon we’re working in a wonderland of white light and muffled sound. It’s a rare cold, dry snow, a welcome relief from the usual muddy quagmire of winter cutting. The rounds are monstrous, some of them so thick that the 24-inch saw bar can’t reach all the way through, and each 16-inch length hits the ground with a thud we can feel through our boot soles. We’re going to have to quarter the rounds in place just to move them. I start in with the maul and wedges, first splitting each round in half, then in half again. If I bend my legs and hug each quarter-round to my chest, I can just barely stand and stagger up to the road with it.

Some miraculous combination of how the logs were suspended above the wet ground and their intact bark has kept the wood dry and perfectly cured. I tap two smaller pieces together and the hollow, ringing sound confirms our hopes. You couldn’t get better firewood if you dried it in a kiln. I feel like we’ve struck gold. “You were right, Travis,” I say. “This is unbelievable.” He could easily say, “I told you so,” but he just shrugs, flips his face shield down, and goes back to cutting.

After I wrestle a particularly heavy quarter round onto the tailgate, I lean over, sweat dripping onto my glasses and my lower back going numb. My breath comes in ragged jets of steam, the last few puffs drifting in the still air like small, individual clouds. I’m beat. While I try to recover, I count growth rings on the quarter-round, losing track after 100, with many more to go. This tree somehow survived the rise and fall of the sawmill in Blakeley Harbor (once the largest in the country) and another at Port Madison; the clearing of land for strawberry farms in the early twentieth century; and, finally, the more recent clearing for the Island’s newest product, suburban sprawl. It’s strange to think of everything this old tree lived through, only to come down on a windy day three years ago.

There’s still the small matter of getting the wood home. I strap the kid seats to the roof to make more space, then fill the cargo area, backseat, and shotgun seat to the ceiling. With night falling, I’m only going to get one trip in today, so I want to make it count. One last, massive quarter round goes on my lap, and after a quick run-through to make sure I can still steer and work the gearshift, I shout goodbye to Travis and pull onto the road. The car smells like a Christmas tree farm.

No matter how dry I think the wood might be, I won’t know for sure until it’s in the stove. And, like a kid with a new toy, I can’t wait to try it out. I turn the floodlights on in our driveway, unload the quarter rounds, and get to work. Splitting wood turns out to be a lot more fun when I’m going to burn it in 15 minutes instead of 15 months. Skyla and Weston come outside to watch, and when I ask them to start carrying wood to the house, they disappear into the backyard.

The kids come back a minute later, dragging their bright orange plastic sled through two inches of snow. Great idea! Why didn’t I think of it? I guess you have to live farther north – or possess the open mind of a child – to see how snow might work to your advantage. We load the clean, freshly split wood into the sled and they mush it to the house with ease.

Stacy already has a pile of hot, glowing coals going in the stove. She puts in two pieces of the new wood, shuts the door and opens the air intake. In less than 30 seconds, the stove fills with flames. I open the door to listen for hissing steam but hear only crackling fire and the occasional snap and pop. A sense of satisfaction completely out of proportion to the simple act of cutting wood and burning it settles over me.

Do we have enough to last through the winter? I doubt it. But the house is warm, the stove’s roaring, and it’s almost time for dinner. That seems like plenty for now.