A winters worth of wood

This afternoon I stacked a winters worth of wood. I love manual labour, when it’s infrequent and seasonal. A quick sift through the woodshed floor for sleepy hedgehogs, then I got stuck in under the pressure of impending rain and darkness. The thing I love about manual labour is the same thing I love about craft, when your hands are busy your mind can wander. The first layer I packed tight, methodically, imagining I was dry-stone walling, hoping my invented technique might prevent the stack from collapsing in the event of an aftershock. The logs were sprinkled with ladybirds, all still, whom I presume from their bright colour were hibernating rather than deceased since its far too cold for them to be gadding around in their summer dresses.

Brain, eyes and hand had it down pat by the second layer and I could masterfully throw the logs into position with precision and ease. The mother of a willful toddler I marveled at the supernatural obedience of these logs which; as if a split tree eager to reunite they reached for each other mid air and clung on.

My mind got to thinking coal versus wood. From a coal mining family, coal for me was all about the sound and cold mornings. The ritual of pre-dawn fire making; the rattly 'rarking' of the ashes, the shocking scrape of coal shoveled, its fierce falling clatter into a metal bucket, all silenced by the ringing clang of the 'coal house' door slammed shut. It was as ordered and mesmeric as a Japanese tea ceremony.

Wood feels warmer in a way, friendlier because of its familiarity even though there's a world of difference between these wild splintered pine logs and the smooth sun-faded patina of my oak dining table. The autumn palette of leaf fall though subdued post mortem continues through winter in the wood pile and the fire. On those damp afternoons when low fog and drifts of soon to be illegal wood smoke mingle creating eerie shifts in sight and light, like ghosts of bonfires past, even woods smokiness seems a boon. Marshmallows are best toasted over wood embers, chestnuts over coals. The consolation for the manuka tree coming down in our garden is the promise of caramelized, wood-smoked fish. Either way you can't cook or curl up, with a thick book, and scorch your skin till it looks like corned beef by a heat pump.

By the third layer I was tiring and under the pressure of a kid due to wake and drizzle. The rain was good, cooling me off. Then, job done, when I was kneeled aching by the hearth waiting for the kindling to strike three ladybirds scuttled suddenly towards me. Faster than I've ever seen them move, they hared across the log escaping the flames. Spooked, ("ladybird ladybird fly-away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn") I swept them onto the hearth, heart pounding, then scooped them up and out into the lavender hedge where the more sensible hedgehogs hibernate. That hedge by the door is convenient for the repetitive log dusting that will be part of the rhythm of fire-making around here from now on.