WOODEN HORSES

Out in the blustery dawn loading up on firewood to restock the holder beside the cold morning stove, using the work to get the bodyheat. Eyeing the oak first of course, as I have all these winter days, the old reliable winter fireheart with its hard and long-burning golden flame, taken straight from the sun.

Oak is our best flame for the heart of winter, heats every nook and cranny of this mountain house, but now that I’m warm so quickly out in the morning, it seemed to me that we’ve passed the heart of winter - though it may return for a passing shove or two of its icy shoulders - so out of habit I was eyeing the big firepower of oak I have out there, turning that gold they get when they’re ready to give back the sun, but then I catch a glimpse of the other stacks, the lighter fiery ones of cherry wood, with that flamey red they dry to, that glows in the morning light and in the stove burns so happily, so friendly flickery...

It’s hard to describe without getting too cute, but cherry is the perfect wood for blustery days because it’s warm in other ways than heat, like a grandma serving cookies and cocoa in front of the fire; it gives back a spritely, cheery kind of flame, long-embered but not strong, not the let’s-get-to-work kind of deep-tempered, hard-edged fire that oak brings to the room when there’s ice on the windows, oak like iron, the workhorse of firewood, the Percheron of flame, its big muscles hauling us all across winters of ice...

After a decade or two with a woodstove on a mountainside with a wide supply of wild windblown wood you get to be kind of a firewood gourmet, it’s like wine or coffee in its way, with body, bouquet, hints of this and that quality, each kind of wood, indeed each tree, having its own character that it’s best to know as best you can, and as I scanned the stacks something spoke to me from inside like the urgevoice that says “Boy, a cup of coffee sure would hit the spot right now,” or “A bit of Puligny-Montrachet would really go good with this meal,” as the conjurevision of the topic shows itself the mind’s eye and that’s what I saw, some cherry wood burning in the stove just minutes from now, with the sky turning the same color outside and the chill wind blowing by, rattling the bamboo, all souled by the cherry flame and the wine color of the dawning sun, it would just all fit together better than it would with oak, I thought, and it did, what can I say, I’ve tried in these awkwords.

Anyway, as to cherry, brighten just one letter and it's cheery...