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...

SOCIETY ON THE MARCH

While arranging my chair on the deck prior to my evening post-woodsplitting glass of wine, I notice an odd smudge on the deck floor. Leaning closer, I see that it is actually a mass perturbation in the long excursion of a tribe of tiny red ants. I follow the formic safari three or four meters back along the deck, the stream being but a narrow red vein (and hard to see against the stained wood of the deck), except for that patch of chaos beneath my chair where, perhaps, they are debating the wisdom of this move. The trail traces back to where the line emerges from a space between two deck boards, the long red line apparently climbing up from the ground along one of the deck posts.

Curious about where in their world the thousands or millions could be going, I note that after passing beneath me (an hour later they are still going by, in undiminished numbers) they make a sharp turn at a serendipitously fallen weeping-cherry stem that directs them toward their new nirvana, the Heavenly Bamboo growing up through a square hole in the deck. They disappear down into the far corner of the square.

At first glance, I thought maybe they were marauding and had found a massive cache of goodies, such as our honey or my gumdrop stash. A closer look with a magnifier (these ants are really tiny) however, reveals that they aren't carrying any luggage or goodies at all, excepting quite a few marchers who are all carrying identical white nanodots, which, given their uniformity, must be the tribal eggs. I also notice that quite a few of the ants are traveling purposefully in the direction opposite that of the horde. Some of those, too, are carrying eggs. There's always a few who haven't a clue...

The odd thing is that about an hour ago, while still splitting wood pre-wine, I picked up from the ground an old roof tile that had fallen from its place in holding down the tarp on a half-cord of wood I'd stacked in front of the deck. When I picked the tile up, I saw that the underside was entirely covered, to a depth of ½ cm, in tiny red ants, who had been using the tile as a way station on their journey.

Before placing the tile back atop the tarp where it belonged, I tapped it on the ground and all the ants fell off in a seething red pile, an event that must've made local ant headlines. That was about 10 meters from the point at which the ants were now emerging from the deck on their sunset pilgrimage. Could they possibly be the same ants (fast moving!), or are such ants generally on the move hereabouts?

Right beneath me a vast society is on the move in its entirety; countless individuals have picked up their lives by the roots, burned their equivalent of bridges and set out for regions far beyond my chair, carrying all they possess of the past and the future-- a radical transformation, all without complaint, or even a sound. Still they issue from their source in silence...

Why they didn't traverse the shorter distance along the ground beneath the deck, or - if they're the tile ants - a straight line to where they're going, a MUCH shorter distance from the tile epoch than the long roundabout route they're taking (with the added hazard of this big wine-sipping human stepping over their invisible trail) is a question best asked of their leaders, as we humans fruitlessly do of our own politicians. "We are committed by fiat to this course of action; it would be unpatriotic to refuse to follow in the tracks of those brave individuals who are so selflessly sacrificing their lives to advance our cause..." etc. (Even though it's 10 times harder than the smart way, or can never be achieved at all.) In the ant world, as in the human, evidence of leadership or impressively manipulable mannequinship should not be mistaken for wisdom.

I notice the ants are still at it, as the light wanes... So are we.