Wooden Life

The adjective, “wooden”, tends to mean stiff and unfeeling. This just isn’t true for my life. My life is surrounded by wood. Indeed, I get my life force largely through wood.

Most of the time I’m in wood that is cured for furniture. The picture for today, however, is another side of the blessing wood is in my life. It is the site where I’m cutting firewood.

I could buy it, but thanks to a very generous family, I have been put in touch with some land where there is wood dying on the trunk. What you see is the last of a red oak that was dead. I cut it down with my son watching so that someone would be available to call 911 if necessary. Also, I won’t have to gnaw off my leg to survive. A lot of the wood in this place is ash which has been affected by ash borers. Most of the time it is down, but sometimes to get to the big stuff I have to cut.

Thanks to my ex-business partner and others I have cut with over the years I (an old time city boy) have learned some tricks. Also, I’ve learned that I can’t predict exactly where something’s going to fall so it’s best not to be around the base of the tree when it starts to tip.

Whenever I’m asked at church or elsewhere what I’m thankful for, I have to answer first “wood.”

You can find Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV (in fact, there’s a picture of their window with my furniture in it; this will be true for the rest of the month of March), also at Bent River Trading Company in Capon Bridge, WV.