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...

ME AND CITIZEN KANE

It seems that winter and the past have caught us short this year: we are nearly out of firewood, yet the snows are still falling. Can't we get things a little better coordinated around here, weather?

I did my part, I thought we'd made it with no problem a couple of days ago, when the warm zephyrs of spring were already wafting their heady way through the sunny, musk-laden air as I worked practically shirtless in the garden, all meteorologically in sync, as I thought, then a couple of nights ago Siberia did a u-turn and dumped a couple of feet of snow on top of us up here.

So now in addition to digging us out I have to dig into my private cache of wood, the bits and chunks of special interest that I've culled out for my own private use on several projects of a creativo-esthetic nature, that cherrywood tray idea, that ironwood vase concept, that curved beech bannister proposal etc., like I have the time anyway, but what is life without dreams.

I know, I know, there will be other uniquely interesting pieces of wood in my future, there will be other gifts of bent cherry, knotty oak, hollow hardwood, more inspiring treasures that nature will lay at my feet, sometimes even on my feet, which is why the steel-toe boots, and I will ramp up the firewooding another notch to accommodate the massive whims of Siberia, but somehow there is a special place in one's heart for primally beloved things that are even now going up in flames, my version of Rosebud.

FIREWOOD TREE

..........by Alastair Heseltine

via

THE WISHES OF HEAVEN

When there's a slow steady snow falling in large flakes through the cold still air and a full day-and-night supply of prime dried firewood stacked next to the stove, which is glowing gold with a well-stocked flame of oak and cherry and there's no point in shoveling off the deck anyway until the snow stops, and besides you've just had a big lunch of hot three-bean soup with toasted baguette and that mystery you put the bookmark in the day before yesterday is right at the point that makes a mystery worth reading - plus it takes place in winter - you'd have to be some kind of insane to wash the dishes, let alone do laundry right now, and thus fly in the face of the almighty, for there is no opposing the vectors, the many powerful vectors that point like the finger of god to the celestial aspects of arranging a few cushions in front of the stove and fulfilling the wishes of heaven, is there.

SHIITAKE SOUP

Echo has been visiting her folks up north since Tuesday so I am here on my own for a few days, chainsawing and stacking sugi and hinoki in the wake of Azuma-san, working up a natural appetite by hefting trees and logs in the perfectly blue morning (interesting to manipulate logs bigger than I am), in the process also keeping monkeys away by my active presence.

Speaking of the sneaky simians, I have been alert for them because the shiitake are just now beginning to emerge, and are right at the dense meaty stage the hairy marauders love to steal most. I harvested a basketful the other day, after a good rain, thereby thwarting the simians from the very first (so far, Brady 100, Mangy Marauders ZERO). Today I went over to the shiitake corner to look closely again, and found a lot of fresh new shrooms curling into the dark on the undersides of the logs, so I took a bunch for lunch.

As to that, as to that (that phrase always reminds me of Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon), for my organic lunch I sauteed in olive oil a chopped big clove of garlic together with a thinly sliced, de-seeded taka-no-tsume ('hawk's talon,' the standard Japanese hot red pepper), then added diced onions, then a couple of sliced, nitrate-free, highly flavored sausages, then some chopped green peppers, Roma tomatoes and sliced okra we got from an uplake neighbor, some diced acorn squash from the farm store, pre-cooked brown rice and cannelloni beans, then added the soup broth, with a dash of shikuwasa (a cuisinary miracle soon to be discovered by world chefs) and a high double handful of big shiitake sliced as thin as paper, then let it all simmer until the okra did that thing that okra does.

Then I had myself a couple bowls of lunch, smiling now and then at thought of the monkeys' red faces when they come and find their mushrooms missing.