CHERRY DREAMS

Late Saturday afternoon Mr. H. - the fellow who's been clearing the land above, as per my Monday post - stopped by to tell me he'd just cut the last of the trees he was going to cut on that land, he was now finished, and that I should go get whatever wood I wanted to take before the trucks came on Sunday afternoon to clear everything away.

I went up there asap early yesterday morning and found that in addition to some slim 'leggy' oaks, Mr. H. had cut a number of wild cherries, causing me all alone there in the forest to jump up in the air and click my heels, sort of a reflex action I exhibit upon seeing wild cherry logs for the taking, lying there in shining splendor right before my eyes.

So there I was again, chasing the deer away from their beds and for most of Sunday bucking, hauling and splitting logs to stack in front of the deck beside all the other wood I have to split for this and next winter, which I went on doing until the sunlight no longer served, then to dinner and bath and sleeping like those wild cherry logs out there.

Wild cherry is one of the finest firewoods there is; I know I keep saying that every time the subject comes up here, but it deserves saying each time, because each time I cut wild cherry it cuts so sweetly and fragrantly, and each time I carry it it smells so invitingly, and then there's the friendly musical tone it makes when tossed upon its fellows in the woodpile, and the even more beautiful note it makes when dry and ready to give back the heat of the sun in my stove, and the look of the wood itself, its heft and solidity, and then when it burns (and it burns well even when not fully dry) it gives off that fragrance again, burns hot and long right down to the finest ash-- wild cherry wood just, shall I say, knows exactly what it is doing in every respect.

Oh, and did I say that wild cherry wood splits as though it thought you'd never ask.