Oak Lessons

Splitting some sections of new oak today, out of long habit wielding maul and wedge without too much thought: not hurrying to get the job done, just hitting the wedge a couple of times and pausing, listening for the tiny sounds that are oak's language of compromise, then hitting a couple times more, pausing again, actions my body and mind have learned to do without me... It surprised me enough to ask myself: When had I learned that? 

How had I acquired the ability to dialog with oak? I had often been in a hurry during the early firewood years, so I had to learn that oak yields slowly and at the price of effort, which is the nature of things in general, oak responding perhaps a little more fairly and intelligently than other materials. So I guess by force of habitual listening I learned when to move and when to wait, so as not to do twice the work for half the result. It doesn't pay to be pushy; oak isn't dumb just because it talks in whispers. 

Being wild, oak is also pretty wily, and has its quirks. If you insist on your way, oak will make you wait, one way or another. If in your interactions with that wood grain you try to hurry, in time you'll get angry and lose, because if there’s one thing oak knows, it's duration. If you're angry splitting oak, you're beside the point.

Then some time later comes the big oak lesson: your mind knows more than you do.

AMAZING GRACE

Yesterday I was out in the hot afternoon sun sweating trying to split a thick section of oak that had, right to its core, an old broken branch that locked the trunk together like a thick iron bolt and rendered the grain perverse to wedge, axe, muscle and the finest curses that can roil from the tongue of man, until at last the lock of the grain surrendered with amazing grace (how sweet the sound) and the halves fell open to reveal a miraculous record of over half a century of infinitesimal effort to counterbalance wind and gravity, seasons and the scars of living.

This one big scar in particular had been woven back to integrity by broad swathes of decades, each weaving recorded in tiny golden waves of fibergrain that swerved and swirled, intertwisted and ultratorqued until the memory of that broken branch was webbed into the past as firmly as with woven steel and with a grace beyond human ability, that now, in the light of the sun, was time itself, in lacings of ivory and gold.

I could only marvel as I squatted there, seeing it shine in the light that was its maker: what craft, what wisdom, what staunch flexibility!

If only I could be as true in all my moments...

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...

SPRUNG THOUGHTS

Out there today doing various odd jobs amidst the melting snow piles, Siberia still wailing just the other side of the mountains, I noticed that the jinchoge knows something, its bud tips barely beginning to well with hints of the color that blossoms with the fragrance of joy that is always a stunning surprise one morning in the dun of early Spring. Daphne. Sweet daphne. And each Spring when I dredge up the English name it gets me thinking about how when I was a kid there were so many autumnal women, aunts and grandmas, named Daphne or Myrtle, unlike today,when women named Myrtle are rare.

At the age of 7 or 8 I didn’t know that Daphne and Myrtle were the names of special flowers that everyone loved, so it always puzzled me why so many stately looking women had these odd and funny sounding names, so like daffy and turtle; then by the time I was twice as old, around 13, I'd learned that these were the names of beautiful fragrant plants that everyone loved and I was even more puzzled as to why these regal and rather hefty ladies were so named. It didn't deeply occur to me that they had once been my age, even younger. The first hints of Spring beget sprung thoughts from a past as long as mine.

So too the oddness of seasonal edges must have affected the panicky hiyodori (brown-eared bulbul), because as I went strolling past the garden, mulling thoughts like the above on my way to add some kitchen garbage and wood ashes to the compost pile, I heard a panicky wing beat, turned and saw that a bulbul had found a way into the netted portion of my garden (Winter is empty and Spring isn't here yet, so the big cupboard is empty except for my little cache), where he’d been enjoying a solitary repast of fresh greens until I'd come blundering along. When he saw me he leaped for safety, but straight up and into the net, there flapping like a moth at the sunlight, but unlike his usual panicky bulbul behavior he wasn't screeching all the while.

I began to think I'd have to go in there to free him and he would totally flip, maybe even die of panic, being among the more psychotic of birds. But  finally he fell back, tumbled into his secret entry hole and exited, flew up into the oak and sat here on a high branch screeching bulbulese insults at me for being such an idiot, for behaving so rudely in his presence, for coming upon him completely unannounced like that while he'd been enjoying a well-deserved banquet, this was his kingdom after all, and when he saw me  just stand there, obtusely insisting on my rights, he winged huffily away, grumbling across the air.

You know those used-up CDs that farmers hereabouts hang in their gardens to let twirl in the wind, gleaming and blinking in the sunlight like big owly or hawky eyes to scare marauding birds away, well they don’t work. There were two such CDs hanging just above the briganding bulbul, who seemed to enjoy their helpful light, perhaps he thought he was in some kind of fancy wingless-two-legger dining and dancing establishment with funky walls, had gotten in without a ticket and was enjoying the free food, the kind that tastes best. I’m not happy being a bouncer, but sometimes a guy’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. The nasty language comes with the job.

Soon my thoughts turned again to the sweet old names Daphne and Myrtle... Since leaving home, I don’t think I’ve ever met another lady of either name. Geez, I have to debark some of this oak... Wonder why no men are named Oak...

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I'M SURPRISED: Part II
You Shoulda Seen the Other Guy

So where was I... Oh yeah. I got into an argument with an oak tree. The other morning I was out there in the comfortably chill sunshine doing midsized standard cherry logs bam-bam done, bam-bam done, bam-bam done etc., it was getting monotonous, so I decided for a change of pace to split that one old gnarly chunk of oak that had the look of trouble and had been laying there in a woody grump for more than a month now, the way troublemaking chunks of oak tend to do - you work them when you have the time, patience and energy (read 'in the morning sunshine'), and are willing to spend some time untangling the puzzle of knots they present.

This chunk of oak had clearly led a vexed and difficult life; the scars of a troubled youth and a harsh upbringing were apparent in its demeanor and arborality, the torques and vectors of its grain reflecting a history of struggle in an unforgiving environment, buffeted by stressful winds and weather, deprived by hardscrabble nourishment. It had not been a happy tree and, as one is largely the result of one's upbringing, it was not a happy chunk. Earlier split from the friendlier portion of a larger trunk, it was about a quarter of the original, about 25 kg of solid torque.

As usual I set the section up on the chopping stump, sussed out the angles, the knots, the grain, the power vectors and whatnot, positioned the wedge for optimal effect and began pounding it in little by little, keeping the maul on, knowing that this was going to be a lengthy process, as it can only be with such a piece of wood. I could hear the oak microsurrendering to the slow but insistent advances of the wedge, the crack was growing, all was progressing nicely toward the big split when I was suddenly standing puzzled in another branch of the reality bureau. I could not figure out what had happened to the moment and my perception of time. How had I gotten here? I was still holding a tool, there was a piece of wood in front of me, my name began with an R, and a wedge was no longer there. That was a clue.

Fortunately I'd been wearing my safety glasses, the new ones I'd just gotten, that have a soft flexy bridge, and that's where the wedge hit. So I got about 20% of the impact above and 20% below the bridge. A few bandages later and all was restored, except for the shiner and a half I was gonna get for the first time since I was ten. (No, I'm not posting a picture.)

Later, when looking out the front window at the chunk still sitting smugly on the chopping stump (was that a smirk?), I noticed that the upper surface of the section was not level, as usual, but slanted - ever so slightly, not enough so I'd notice when beside it - toward where I'd been standing. That crafty old oak, aiming itself. Add another lesson to the the growing pile.

Oddly enough, other than a brief dim headache it didn't hurt, until later when Echo told me something that surprised me and I said OW! My eyebrows had shot up. So as long as I live a completely predictable life for about a week or so, I'm fine. I don't know if I'll be able to stand it. OW! I just read more about the US economic bailout.

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I'M SURPRISED: Part I
Argument with an Oak Tree

Firewooding is inherently dangerous work, since it involves the vigorous handling of chainsaws, steel axes and mauls of various sizes and weights, as well as wedges (which is why I wear safety glasses, leather gloves and thick clothing), and often heavy chunks of unwieldy wood, which is why I wear steel-toed boots.

Such activity on my part has led not only to a warm house in winter, but also to the many firewood-related tales that punctuate these miraculously continuing chronicles, with more yet to come - time and life permitting - tales touching upon the myriad characteristics of our friends the trees, ranging from elegance, cunning and maliciousness to stubbornness, beauty, vengeance-- and in the present instance, the anger of wood.

It is not commonly realized that in the wild and woody world, nature and nurture are one and the same. As a result, any wood can be cunning, stubborn or malicious-- even cherry - dangerous for its very beauty and innocence - particularly yamazakura (lit: mountain cherry), to say nothing of the exhausting tangle that is camphorwood - and one should never assume kindredness of spirit when it comes to oak, particularly when it is gnarly.

One who is not otherwise misguided might think that these inanimate chunks of lignin are essentially dumb as a posts, but that would be a big mistake, for all wood is ingrained with a craftiness of ancient subtlety. For example, when driving a wedge into a tough piece of knotted oak, I take care to keep away from above the wedge - as, for instance, to see if it is driving true. I do this because the knotty upbringing of certain oaks, with their decades of 24/7 wild experience, can make them very touchy at the idea of surrendering to a rootless stripling like myself, and at any instant a way gnarly specimen can spit that iron wedge many feet into the air like a 1kg bullet, and each time I see it do that I say to myself in a kind of lectury way, so as to keep myself smart and try to maintain just that bit of edge over oak: Boy, I sure am glad I didn’t have my face above that wedge...

But unlike oak, humans don't remember everything.

To be continued...

FIREWOOD FINDS OUT

There are secrets you can’t keep from firewood, especially oak. Such as where your feet are. Oak has relentless inertial curiosity, coupled with a strong affinity for toes. In fact we might be dealing here with one of the as yet unidentified forces at play in the universe-- so much remains a mystery to us. Someone with a scientific smirk on his face might remark “Oh, that’s just gravity at work,” but he’s simply confirming our instant hypothesis that he’s never split any oak in his life.

In my previous struggles regarding the wood, with its heavy agenda and grainy gravitas, it was generally the oak that had the upper hand, so to speak; it always knew where my feet were and how to reach them by the shortest route. Oak is deeply savvy, in its way; growing for centuries affords a pretty thorough education, well-grounded in gravity and inertia.

So because I have big feet I've been wasting a lot of energy anticipating, avoiding and however preventing firewood-toe interaction, so I finally got the message (you do not want to see my left big toe!) and took action. This morning I put on the brand-new size 11 steel-toed rubber boots I received at lightning speed from the surprisingly low-priced, yet high-quality Gempler’s (big-footed, long-armed rural expats take note), but the firewood didn’t know a thing about it. I was curious as to how quickly the oak would find out.

It didn't take long. This morning I was out firewooding as usual this time of year, in this instance splitting a 40 cm-diameter oak section into 8 splits, all of which were itching to get at my feet - it’s hard to herd oak once it’s split and on its own - in the woody melee, one of the splits broke free and headed instantly for that big toe you didn’t want to see - oak knows these things (e.g., left, not right) - it struck hard and fast, as usual, with that little vicious noogie in there for good measure that oak likes to give when it gets the chance, but it just-- bounced off my boot, giving a little oaken Huh? of surprise in mid-air, then falling to earth and just laying there stunned, not doing the usual hard bounce and wicked spin to maybe zing a shin or whang an ankle.

The oak was still crackling to itself as I tossed it among its fellows in the wheelbarrow, trying to keep the smirk off my face, you've got to be careful around oak. I noted though that the splits went on crackling and whispering in the wheelbarrow all the way to the woodpile… Maybe I should order shin guards and a helmet?

LIFE TO THE DAY

This late September afternoon and evening I'm out running around with one arm plus, sectioning, sorting and stacking a mountain of firewood we got from some landscaper guys who were scaping the grounds of a house for sale down the mountain, we asked if they could bring the firewoody results to our house (they're glad to, rather than drive several loads of wood all the way to a landfill or incinerator), so they dumped logs and long branches of ironwood, oak, beech, locust and black pine in front of the deck on Thursday night, and twice more today.

It always surprises me how heavy ironwood is, just a 30 cm diameter yard-long chunk makes you take an extra breath and then lift again for real-- I'm being careful with the one arm plus, though one could get carried away at the sight of so much free heat to put in the bank, but I have my limits and I listen for them, the arm whispers to me in the edgy lingo of early pain, then I stop.

But I got a lot done today nevertheless, also started another of my patented Brady Cedar-tree firewood holders - have those tall, green sophisticated presences do something more than look beautiful, put those strong slim bodies to work, get some muscle on those grainy bones, thereby freeing up our metal firewood holder for winter use on the deck, which was part of the plan -

In the midst of all these hitherings amidst the rough bark and grain, through the grays and browns and fading greens and crisping leaves, with the right-on-time blossoms of higanbana rising straight up, standing around like squads of cardinals watching a priest do all the work, I couldn't help but notice the extreme oddness of a big beautiful delicate yellow summer flower coming up from the nowhere of tall unkempt grass that's always by the garden faucet, no place for such a flower, out of time too, for when I looked closer with an armful of ironwood I saw that it was a melon flower, a golden mist of a blossom grown from a seed dropped some time during the summer when I was washing the kitchen sink garbage strainer (after dumping the contents on the compost pile over by the cherry tree).

And so an opportune packet of life took advantage of the household situation to show the immediate world what a melon seed can do on its own amidst hard labor and punctilious bloomings, and what a beauty it was, all the more precious for being so out of place and time: a summer melon blossoming in Autumn, a flowery martyrdom up here on the mountain, quiet little facet of the mystery, offering its bright life on the fading day...

EYES AND OAK

As hinted at in various of these eclectic chronicles, the experiences of a freelance editor attempting to live in simple modernity out in the Japanese countryside can be surreal when the simple and modern converge head-on (in my head) at times such as today, when, after splitting a stack of firewood in the cool of the morning I came into the house to have at the waiting stack of pages and had to get at the grain of the suggestion that monocular diplopia arises from secondary astigmatism in combination with spherical aberration, whereas monocular triplopia arises from trefoil in combination with spherical aberration.

As the two experiences blend organically in said head, at some deeper level that I have no time to fathom at the moment I surmise that both diplopia and triplopia have much in common with cherry bark and the grain of oak. I’ll get out my mental wedge later and see if this mindwood will split and dry, make a viable flame.

GROWTH RINGS

One of the imposed privileges in splitting the oak sections stacked up in the far corner of the garden by the gate is that because of the temporary logistics I have to walk from the splitting stump (under the plum tree in front of the deck) to the big pile of sectioned oak laying there amid the big mess of leaves and branches, and one-by-one carry the sections back to the stump where I split and stack them.

Then I get to walk back over the garden ground again, empty armed in the fresh exhilaration of moment-ago labor, and on this perfect blue cool fall day enjoy the heft of the light on the goldening grasses, all laid out like in a world-sized museum with exhibits of fallen leaves gleaming in the bright, from the shiny ribbed red-tan of the chestnut parchments just starting to fall, to the big oak leaves now pieces of golden buckskin, and the changing leaf-hearts of the dokudami still rising from the ground, putting on that mottled rainbow show they do each year at this time; and never are the lily leaves so beautifully themselves as when the low wintering sun shines right through them from the side, turning them into blades of imperial jade swaying in the slightness of the breeze, when on the same breeze come drifting the first of the day-glow leaves from over in the other corner of the garden where the momiji reaches for more, scattering its handspans of red and gold here and there among the buckskin on the ground, what a show it all is, then I arrive at the pile, pick up a big chunk of trunk to carry back to the splitting stump, and then when that's done I get another new walking show, all the blue morning.

Just the sound of the leaves beneath my feet carries me back to childhood days when rainbows of maples covered everything in kid-made mounds of leaves, that walking-through-them sound linked forever with the fun of being the child who centers me like the oldest ring in a tall oak tree.

All the mysteries there are...

LUMBERJACK

This was lumberjacking weekend. There were a couple of teetering cedars right out front, leaning over the house and just waiting for a hurricane; a dead cedar right out back that was about 30 meters tall and slowly degrading, also just waiting for a hurricane, and an unbalanced oak that had to be professionally trimmed so that a reasonable amount of sunlight can fall on the garden when I figure out the sci-fi plans for my new anti-monkey fencing.

We called the local hub for such matters, and contracted for a crew who came on Saturday. The crew was a small bent-over man going on 80 years old! Echo and I stood there filling with doubt as he got out of his truck, sat down on the stone wall to put on his work boots and then asked for some salt to use in the purification ceremony before starting work.

Our doubts lasted until Mr. Azuma – that was his name – climbed smoothly from the upper end of his high ladder way to the tippy-top of the 25-meter oak and began pruning away, alternating handsaw and chainsaw while just holding on with his toes, moving around among the limbs with the grace of one who has done this sort of thing for a long, long time, until the oak looked very slim and stylish; he said it would grow into a nice shape henceforth and not grow any taller. We were reassured.

While he was preparing his solo felling of the huge dead cedar that stood only one meter from our new tile roof waiting for a hurricane, we asked him about the questionable chestnut tree that stands in the garden a few meters from said roof. He gave the tree a brief glance, said it had insect problems, would last maybe another 5-7 years, then would fall, but no immediate worry.

Then he revved up his chainsaw (a Shindaiwa 380), made some delicate surgical cuts in the big multi-ton dead cedar tree, now and then sighting along the intended path like a baseball pitcher, made a wedge out of a piece of my oak firewood, used a sledgehammer to drive it into the final cut, added another wider wedge a bit further over as he aimed some more and the tree wiggled at the top, rocked, tilted -- tilted more, then gave way with a crack and fell straight away from the house WHOOMP right between my rosemary and basil, which were stirred by the timber wind.

We talked while he ate his newspaper-wrapped simple bento lunch seated crosslegged on the deck, smiling and laughing at his own words, in a dialect I had to cut with a mental chainsaw. He'd been doing this work since he was young; lived alone, married twice, long ago, but it didn't take; cooks his own meals, grows his own rice, grows his own vegetables (why do otherwise, he said), makes his own sake, makes his own charcoal for cooking and heating, gave me the best intense course on chainsaw maintenance I ever had, then cut down the trees close in front of the house, felling them right where he aimed, sectioned them to the desired lengths and drove away.

What a guy.

THE WILD WORKS FAST

About half the wood I've been splitting lately is oak and half is wild cherry, thinned by the new owner of a pre-existing house upmountain that during the past decade had gotten overgrown to the extent of disappearing. The wild works fast up here. I had so much wood from that thinning that I couldn't buck/split/stack it fast enough while earning an income and having a life at the same time, so the last of it got wet from the intervening rains. You don't have long, after that. I managed to get most of the remnant split before it soaked up too much water, but now I'm down to the last few logs and I can see the difference a month makes.

The oak, if it spends too long in the open (even if covered sitting on the ground), dense as it is, nevertheless acts like a friendly sponge and soon is completely permeated by fungal mycelium, which beyond a certain point never really dries out to the original oaken qualities. If 'dry' it will burn, but only half-heartedly, having been moisturized/mineralized by the fungus. As it is now, I can strip the bark on many of the bigger oak logs and split them, and they'll still dry to a good hard firewood (about half of the remnant, ca. 1% of the whole wood load; as to the other half (smaller limbs), it's too late; they're fertilizer and mulch). For all its hardness, oak goes bad in a hurry.

The wild cherry, on the other hand, a much softer, lighter wood, is practically impervious to rot. It can lay there in the open for a long time and lose nothing but the bark. It has a thick cambium layer, up to a quarter inch when swelled with rain, providing conditions ideal for all sorts of wood beetle larvae, for whom it is a few months in Phuket while they discover who they really are.

When I split the wet-barked cherry logs at last, I have to debark each section, then scrape off the damp spongy layer (sort of like fibrous chocolate) so the wood can dry. You can't dry wood wrapped in a wet blanket. When I remove the bark (which can be a chore, but it's worth it, for cherry firewood) the fat and sassy larvae lolling here and there in the rich cambium are stunned by the sudden removal of their rightful roof and by the shocking light, whatever that is; they look up from their ruptured paradise in pale, distraught disbelief, staring around at the incomprehensible change, rudely awakened to a new and unwelcome reality: "I thought I had more months on this lease, at least until next spring... This log was my birthright, I tell you; I inherited this property..." but as soon as they perceive that I and my scraper are serious, they bail. Right onto the growing pile of wet bark on the ground, where perhaps they'll manage to dine and carry on... It's either a cold autumn for them or a cold winter for me...

Dr. Crow seems interested in the plight of these succulent creatures as well: "Say, Bob, you gonna do anything with those rare delicacies?" he warbles unctuously, honing his beak on the phone wire...