Burning Wood

It’s firewood season. I’m getting a late start due to a procedure that replaced bone with titanium in my right hip. Now, 8 weeks post surgery, I’m mobile enough to handle a saw and start the process. We like to cut firewood a full year in advance allowing time for a thorough curing. It’s a simple enough chore but not a quick one— we don’t produce the required five or six chords of finished product in a week— and neither is it a chore I look forward to though it always gives me pleasure. I have to make myself do this thing that inevitably brings great satisfaction. It’s a mystery.

We’ve relied on wood heat for the past 44 years, not exclusively, but primarily. For too much of that time I was a rookie with a chainsaw, aware of safety precautions but poorly schooled in the art of chain sharpening and felling trees. I’m still no professional, but now take delight in keeping a chain aggressive so it pulls its way through the log, and can usually drop a tree precisely where intended.  Years ago I set aside my six pound splitting maul and embraced a hydraulic wood splitter without apology. Now a motor runs just above idle as I sit comfortably on a log, pulling a lever that delivers multiple tons of splitting force. Even the most knot filled and cross grained logs, those that would cause a maul swung with purpose to gleefully bounce, yield to my liking. In the end I’m left with the sight and smell of freshly cut and split wood, stacked and drying under cover, holding the promise of radiant, luxurious warmth.

Our wood stove is made of soapstone, a metamorphic rock which withstands high temperatures and demonstrates superb heat storing qualities.  The stove includes a remarkable catalytic combustor which comes into play when the internal temperature reaches 500°. At that point a baffle is engaged, redirecting fumes through the combustor where the specialized design and noble metals work their magic, burning smoke before it exits the chimney.  It’s a delight to see, the logs glowing softly, while above them the smoke igniting into rolls of gentle flame. With all systems in full operation the wood gets burned with almost 90% efficiency, leaving little ash and providing heat that would otherwise be lost. It is so efficient that no observable smoke exits the chimney and the smell of woodsmoke is nonexistent.

From an environmental perspective I am content with this setup. Wood as fuel still emits carbon, but it’s not the fossilized product inherent to coal, gas, and oil, the evil stuff driving climate change and all its disastrous consequences. The carbon our stove releases today will be totally reabsorbed and stored in new tree growth within a generation.

It’s not practical to heat all the world’s buildings with wood, even with high efficiency stoves and boilers. But for decades Lee and I have had the good fortune to have ready access to firewood, so we have burned less oil and fracked gas, sparing the atmosphere ancient carbon and saving cash in the process.  It’s been a privilege.

I have an acquaintance who studied diaries left by early settlers of the region. He mentioned that their daily entries almost always included time given to cutting and splitting wood. It was, of course, the only fuel available to heat their homes and to fire their cookstoves. And all that wood was cut with a crosscut saw and split with an axe.  There’s a fine documentary entitled Alone in the Wilderness which follows the life of Richard Proenneke in the wilds of Alaska. In it he builds a log cabin and cuts all his wood for the long Alaskan winter using a one man crosscut saw.  I notice his upper arm approximating the size of a typical man’s calf, a testament to the hours spent with saw in hand. I envision the arms of most early settlers being similarly proportioned.

A classmate of mine went to graduate school in Vermont. Although it was generations later than the first settlers, many of those hardy Vermonters still relied exclusively on wood for heat. They, of course, had chainsaws, but many of their homes still lacked insulation, and the gauge to estimate the amount of cured and stacked wood required was that it equal the size of the house.  Neighbors in the area would form groups and move from one homestead to the next until everyone’s needs were satisfied.

I can imagine the satisfaction in being part of such an effort; the camaraderie, the invigorating, wholesome exercise, the speed at which individual sheds were filled.  But I also welcome being the sole participant in the process. I enjoy silencing the saw and breathing in the winter landscape: the downy woodpecker tapping the loose bark of a dead elm, the red tailed hawk soaring overhead, the smell of forest duff and sawdust.

It snowed last night, one of those windless events with temperatures hovering around freezing so the flakes clung to every limb, stalk, and needle. Today, stiff north winds are ushering in a cold front and we’re promised single digits by morning. Birds are heavy at the feeders, more than 50 cardinals among the assemblage. In the evening our stomachs are content following a hearty winter meal. The porch is stacked with seasoned red oak, the woodstove is purring, its internal temperature approaching 1000°, the soapstone radiating gentle heat throughout the house.

On this night, by the stove, with the balance of the winter’s fuel fully cured and under roof, all is not well with the world, but appears to be.