Firewood

Among the most essential elements to the hermit’s independence is his woodpile. He may spend weeks falling, hauling, cutting, splitting and piling his wood. Some say firewood warms you twice, but the reality is it warms you every time it is handled. There is cedar for kindling, pine for quick, hot burns, Doug fir and larch for the long burns, and the occasional birch round for the coldest of the winter nights. When he saws the logs to length, he notices the annual rings of alternating light and dark and thinks about his life and history, the bark and cambium just a few years past when there was drought that killed the tree, then the seven drought year rings tight together, then the wet years of the 90’s when snow was so abundant that snowshoes became the favored mode of travel. Deeper into the wood he finds the rings of the 80’s, Regan and parties, college, drinking, wild, fun times. Then into the past when he bought the land and started clearing for the cabin; the trees put on quick growth those years when he culled the weak and diseased. The next set of rings indicate the time before he came to this part of Montana; close, tight rings from overgrowth and neglect: the Nixon years, the cold war, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, World War Two, Hoover, Depression, then larger divisions from the homestead days when the first logging took place. A few trees go older than that, past the days of the first settlers, to the days when Indians roamed the valley and few, if any people came into these woods.
As he cuts and splits the wood, stacks it in neat piles, he wonders if there will ever be another to share the warmth with.