Wood
I'm trying to make my blog more 'anonymous,' and I've taken my real first name off; until I can come up with a suitable psuedonym, westslope it is. I have very mixed feelings; I love to see myself addressed by my first name in the comments, and maybe I'll change my mind and switch back, but as I include more content up here from church, from work...I'm writing about other people also. It's not my own past I'm trying to hide; it's the present which involves others.
I have, though, added an email, which I never had up before. It's available under my profile.
So much for the current blog drama.
***
Summer is here, or it feels so, though the full, heavy heat of July and August is still to come. Even at my elevation, without air conditioning, there are days I get into my truck and head up to beat the swelter. In thirty minutes, maybe forty, I can be close to 7000 feet. Up there, even when the temperature is 108 at the valley floor, perhaps 97 at my house, it's comfortably cool, often with light breezes, in the high woods, the forests and meadows not far below the gray granite timberline. The limbs on the conifers that high often grow downwards because of the heavy snow load in the winter; and trees blasted over by the winter storms are easy to find (often half bucked up by those hunting firewood, which is usually what I'm doing up there also...chainsaw, chaps, gloves, orange ear plugs, a measuring tape and lumber pencil to mark the cuts). The summer calm in the high meadows is brilliant, still, and very gentle; it's hard to imagine the tree shattering winds and snowfall that dominated the air and land months before.
I have taken my wife and son one at a time, and one other friend, climbing high onto what the loggers call slash piles: great mounds of left behind tree trunks and limbs, the small piles as big as my house, the bigger ones several times as large. But each one full of cedar, fir, or if I'm very lucky, oak, which as a hardwood, burns longer and hotter. Our first winter I cut every stick we burned; now I buy some, cut some; with a pick up...I don't think I'll be buying any this year. It's dusty, heavy work. Cutting off round after round, or bringing home five or six foot lengths to buck into that ideal 16 inch piece...then the splitting (which, fool that I am, I've always done by hand) and stacking to let the wood season. Fact is, the forest service charges me ten dollars a cord (though no one has stopped me to check my tags yet, the little I bring out at a time) and so it's possible, with plenty of sweat, to heat the house in winter for almost nothing, or at least our great room where the fireplace is.
Of course, for about 550 dollars, I can buy two full cord of split and dry hardwood which is more than enough to last me a winter as we use propane also. I think I tried to figure once how much I'm making an hour, limbing, bucking, splitting, stacking, and hauling all that wood...it wasn't an impressive number considering what it would cost me to buy it. With our middle-class income, the cutting is done more for the love of working the mountain itself, the way a farmer must feel,or a gardener. Of course, I don't actually cut down any trees unless they're very dead and very small; felling takes true talent and is illegal without permits. But cutting up the downed trees, the ones already blown over by the wind or snow, or cleaning through the slash piles, using energy to heat my home that otherwise would only rot over a decade onto the forest floor, that feels almost like creating some new thing.
It's true I'm often alone, and that's not the smartest, but I take extra care when I am. Looking out for lions (squatted down with the saw off, earplugs in) if there is any way one can look out for such a predator, and trying also not to cut my fingers off or have the saw kick back into my face (much more likely risks that mountain lions). But really, I think it's a pretty safe pasttime, and one I look forward to getting back into now that I again have a way to bring the downed wood home.
There is a feeling of security, a primitive and masculine sensation, bringing home wood I know will heat my family no matter what happens to the power or the weather. Central heaters take electricity to run, of course, and while losing power happens less and less during the winter storms it does still happen; knowing I have two cord of dry cedar I split myself under a tarp in my yard is a very calm feeling. If the juice goes, I toss the perishables out onto the snow on the deck, cook whatever we need on the wood stove, even sleep in the great room with the hot stove all night.
I can't remember where I read it, maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, maybe in Abbey, perhaps Desert Solitaire? But one writer I know talks about cruising down an empty country road that goes over a commuter freeway during rush hour. No one is even on the road he's on, but he can look down and see the thousands of cars, the tense and red faces, the heat and the smoke. Living in the mountains is like that in some ways. Sure I sit in traffic jams sometimes; I certainly drive a lot (hence the continuing need to improve my stereo and my techno collection) but when I see the tract houses (is it tract or track) piled together, all the same, same roofs and colors, tiny yards, a little lawn park with a few trees in the middle...sure there are advantages to living like that. I may end up in a place like that myself when I'm older. But all those ridiculous myths you hear about living close to nature in the woods, about birds all around the house, seasons changing dramatically...those are all true. Our dogwoods are in bloom, I can hear the robins and the jays even now. It's a pretty good bet there isn't another human within 100 yards of me at the moment. That's not far by country standards by any means, but I'm not looking out my slider at my neighbor's kitchen sink either.
I don't mean to sound critical. There are as many ways to live as radii in the circle, as Thoreau says. There are drawbacks to life in the quasi-suburban woods and I've shared them. But sublime, cyclical beauties too. And I'm close, very close, to country so open, the whole wide back of the sierra crest itself, that I can get there very easily. My hope is to get into backcountry more this summer than I did last year, even though I'm teaching summer school (perhaps to learn to sail in the sea, of all incongruous things).
***
To close, a very good friend of mine just gave me an essay by Raymond Carver (my minimalist title is in his honor); Carver was one of the best short story writers of the last half of the twentieth century, and Carver says you should never publish half assed work. There's no excuse for not producing only one's best. My buddy tells me, and I should know it, that the best writing comes from re-writing, from writing a paragraph 27 times until it looks like it was written once. I've never done any prose which could be considered creative until this blog, and those are both great pieces of advice. But then, this is a blog. This is talking to friends, not a paying audience. And the whole thing here for me is more about support and pleasure than art. I've used this place for support many times; I hope I can at times provide pleasure. I know there are better bloggers out there and I've said so before, but perhaps my blog is a different flavor. Better yet, I know some of you have grown to care for me through this thing, and that, truly, is worth more than all.
t
I have, though, added an email, which I never had up before. It's available under my profile.
So much for the current blog drama.
***
Summer is here, or it feels so, though the full, heavy heat of July and August is still to come. Even at my elevation, without air conditioning, there are days I get into my truck and head up to beat the swelter. In thirty minutes, maybe forty, I can be close to 7000 feet. Up there, even when the temperature is 108 at the valley floor, perhaps 97 at my house, it's comfortably cool, often with light breezes, in the high woods, the forests and meadows not far below the gray granite timberline. The limbs on the conifers that high often grow downwards because of the heavy snow load in the winter; and trees blasted over by the winter storms are easy to find (often half bucked up by those hunting firewood, which is usually what I'm doing up there also...chainsaw, chaps, gloves, orange ear plugs, a measuring tape and lumber pencil to mark the cuts). The summer calm in the high meadows is brilliant, still, and very gentle; it's hard to imagine the tree shattering winds and snowfall that dominated the air and land months before.
I have taken my wife and son one at a time, and one other friend, climbing high onto what the loggers call slash piles: great mounds of left behind tree trunks and limbs, the small piles as big as my house, the bigger ones several times as large. But each one full of cedar, fir, or if I'm very lucky, oak, which as a hardwood, burns longer and hotter. Our first winter I cut every stick we burned; now I buy some, cut some; with a pick up...I don't think I'll be buying any this year. It's dusty, heavy work. Cutting off round after round, or bringing home five or six foot lengths to buck into that ideal 16 inch piece...then the splitting (which, fool that I am, I've always done by hand) and stacking to let the wood season. Fact is, the forest service charges me ten dollars a cord (though no one has stopped me to check my tags yet, the little I bring out at a time) and so it's possible, with plenty of sweat, to heat the house in winter for almost nothing, or at least our great room where the fireplace is.
Of course, for about 550 dollars, I can buy two full cord of split and dry hardwood which is more than enough to last me a winter as we use propane also. I think I tried to figure once how much I'm making an hour, limbing, bucking, splitting, stacking, and hauling all that wood...it wasn't an impressive number considering what it would cost me to buy it. With our middle-class income, the cutting is done more for the love of working the mountain itself, the way a farmer must feel,or a gardener. Of course, I don't actually cut down any trees unless they're very dead and very small; felling takes true talent and is illegal without permits. But cutting up the downed trees, the ones already blown over by the wind or snow, or cleaning through the slash piles, using energy to heat my home that otherwise would only rot over a decade onto the forest floor, that feels almost like creating some new thing.
It's true I'm often alone, and that's not the smartest, but I take extra care when I am. Looking out for lions (squatted down with the saw off, earplugs in) if there is any way one can look out for such a predator, and trying also not to cut my fingers off or have the saw kick back into my face (much more likely risks that mountain lions). But really, I think it's a pretty safe pasttime, and one I look forward to getting back into now that I again have a way to bring the downed wood home.
There is a feeling of security, a primitive and masculine sensation, bringing home wood I know will heat my family no matter what happens to the power or the weather. Central heaters take electricity to run, of course, and while losing power happens less and less during the winter storms it does still happen; knowing I have two cord of dry cedar I split myself under a tarp in my yard is a very calm feeling. If the juice goes, I toss the perishables out onto the snow on the deck, cook whatever we need on the wood stove, even sleep in the great room with the hot stove all night.
I can't remember where I read it, maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, maybe in Abbey, perhaps Desert Solitaire? But one writer I know talks about cruising down an empty country road that goes over a commuter freeway during rush hour. No one is even on the road he's on, but he can look down and see the thousands of cars, the tense and red faces, the heat and the smoke. Living in the mountains is like that in some ways. Sure I sit in traffic jams sometimes; I certainly drive a lot (hence the continuing need to improve my stereo and my techno collection) but when I see the tract houses (is it tract or track) piled together, all the same, same roofs and colors, tiny yards, a little lawn park with a few trees in the middle...sure there are advantages to living like that. I may end up in a place like that myself when I'm older. But all those ridiculous myths you hear about living close to nature in the woods, about birds all around the house, seasons changing dramatically...those are all true. Our dogwoods are in bloom, I can hear the robins and the jays even now. It's a pretty good bet there isn't another human within 100 yards of me at the moment. That's not far by country standards by any means, but I'm not looking out my slider at my neighbor's kitchen sink either.
I don't mean to sound critical. There are as many ways to live as radii in the circle, as Thoreau says. There are drawbacks to life in the quasi-suburban woods and I've shared them. But sublime, cyclical beauties too. And I'm close, very close, to country so open, the whole wide back of the sierra crest itself, that I can get there very easily. My hope is to get into backcountry more this summer than I did last year, even though I'm teaching summer school (perhaps to learn to sail in the sea, of all incongruous things).
***
To close, a very good friend of mine just gave me an essay by Raymond Carver (my minimalist title is in his honor); Carver was one of the best short story writers of the last half of the twentieth century, and Carver says you should never publish half assed work. There's no excuse for not producing only one's best. My buddy tells me, and I should know it, that the best writing comes from re-writing, from writing a paragraph 27 times until it looks like it was written once. I've never done any prose which could be considered creative until this blog, and those are both great pieces of advice. But then, this is a blog. This is talking to friends, not a paying audience. And the whole thing here for me is more about support and pleasure than art. I've used this place for support many times; I hope I can at times provide pleasure. I know there are better bloggers out there and I've said so before, but perhaps my blog is a different flavor. Better yet, I know some of you have grown to care for me through this thing, and that, truly, is worth more than all.
t
Comments
I enjoy your writing tremendously. All of our blogs are completely unique, as the products of unique individuals. They are all constantly morphing and evolving and changing in purpose.
Anonymity--you know all your comments in previous posts have your first name still, right? I think you can disable comments for past posts, not certain.
Very nice peice. I'm about to die of jealousy, here in very flat, very monotonous, very HOT Florida. Your home and the woods around it sound wonderful, restful, almost spiritual.
But if you guys want to experience the sierra email me and come up sometime!
Thanks for the positives.
Yeah, I know my name is still in all my past blogs. I don't have time to figure it out, but I think there's a way to go Ano; if not, I can start another blog.
Love to all,
t