the nature of wood

I had a fight with my stove today. I suppose it was bound to happen. I was ignoring the beech, burning almost exclusively the tulip poplar, which is easy to split, easy to saw, easy to burn. My beech was clearly getting jealous, feeling neglected and overlooked. So, in honor of my success in splitting the beech logs, and eager to make amends, I went to burn my beech.

What I did not know was that here, too, beech is a bit bitchy. It is a finicky burn. It likes much a hotter stove, a more fire-y box than the poplar. It takes more heat, more energy, to get it to burn. The small bit of tinder and starter logs I can use to get a raging poplar burn going did not do it for the beech. The box stayed cold; the early flames died down. The beech resisted all efforts to coax it out of its angry funk. It sat there, arms folded, wrapping around and around itself. (That is what the circular markings in the bark looked like; the wood closing in on itself, keeping me and the flames out, refusing to open up and embrace the fire.)

I tried several times to make up to it. I slipped rolled up sheets of newspaper, peppered with tinder, under the two beech logs, lit them and watched as the conflagration roared. The beech, I hoped, would surely warm to this. I tried it once, and twice, and a third time. Nothing doing.

With tinder harvesting still a few days away (the fallen twigs are both largely covered with snow and very wet), I dole out my tinder quite sparingly. It was time to stop throwing good wood after bad.

So I did the only thing I could. I cleared out the slightly charred but resistant beech logs, and started a fire with my reliable poplar. Once I got that up and going, I gingerly placed the smaller beech log in the readied stove, in the belly of the beast, in the midst of the flames. The beech finally warmed to my ministerings, forgave me my transgressions, and gave itself to the fire.

What is amazing is how the beech burns. While the poplar seems to absorb the fire, taking it into its core, soaking in the flames, the beech wears its fire like a coat. The flames appear to float upon its surface, like those that dance upon liqueur poured into a dish or upon food en flambe. The flames of the poplar wrap themselves around the log, licking the wood as if to taste its goodness. The flames on the beech, quite differently, go shooting out, as if escaping through castle portals, never looking back, never acknowledging the source of their energy.

It is obvious by now that I am totally captured, totally enrapt, by the whole enterprise of burning wood. What I love is the intimacy of knowledge that I gain through handling it and observing it. To know intellectually that wood has different grains, different densities and hardnesses, different feels and qualities, is one thing. We all know this. George Nakashima, the great wood-worker and furniture maker, lived his life and honed his craft in response to the distinctive gifts of each piece of wood.

But to see it for yourself, to experience it, to watch your wood act out its distinctiveness under the press of your hand or behind the tempered glass of your stove, is to be awed, to become a humble student of the mysteries of nature.

For me, it is my stove. For musicians, it is the touch and sound of their instrument. For scientists it is the particular valence of a metal or the measure of a wave-length. Whatever it is, we each need that connection. For the sake of our souls, for the sake of the world, for the profound sense of awe it can bring us, each of us should find a way to become intimate with the physical world. It is a profound gift and healing teacher.