Wood

The nurse in the ER said, “oh yes, we see these all the time” as she injected me with whatever drug it is that makes pain go away. As she proceeded to wash out the minute debris from the one inch nick in my kneecap, I realized my own personal little trauma was something many a careless woodsman experiences. In fact, anyone that has truly earned the title of “Woodsman” would never make the mistake of stepping on a slippery log while the bar of the chainsaw (that’s the business end) was anywhere near their legs, especially when the chain is spinning. That was over ten years ago, and I still carry the scar. I’m always mindful of it, even though I wear double layered Carhart’s and am much more present when working in the woods. But I'm a long way from the Woodsman title, and hope I never lose a healthy respect for the latent dangers of cutting wood.

The guy that replaced our roof used to be a logger. He gave me tips that will probably save my life one day. Scary, gory stories that are exactly the kind of education a novice woodchuck needs to hear before they march off into the forest and get themselves killed. An 80 ft tree, a deciduous 80 ft tree is an amazing structure that unlike pine or fir, which are mostly straight trunks, bends and turns and branches as it grows toward the sun. The art of felling a large tree in the direction you want is an exercise in physics that comes from a mixture of experience and common sense. Speaking of… you need to look up every now and again. “Widowmakers” are what they call broken branches hung up higher in a tree waiting to come loose either by wind or the shaking of a tree as it’s being cut. You don’t just walk up to a tree and start sawing or you could end up skewered.

I cut mostly alder as it grows like weeds around the foothills of the Cascades, and burns pretty clean as firewood goes. I try to take trees that are dying or partially blown over by the wind because they too are living things, many older than myself. So when the deed is done and the tree is down, I take a moment and thank the tree for giving its energy to heat my house and barn. I put my hands on the trunk and look closely at the scars and knots that tell a story of it’s aging. I get reflective and feel like I’m looking into a mirror.

I really enjoy this work, and believe somewhere in my genetic code there is woodchuck. It’s almost time to start the process again: felling, limbing, cutting, bucking, hauling, splitting, stacking. Firewood needs time to dry, and I bring in three cords of wood so I better get this on the calendar. It’s hard work, and the workout I get is so much more enjoyable than sweating in some athletic club. A cord of wood for you factoids is 128 cubic feet or 4’w x 4’h x 8’ long, which conveniently is exactly the inner dimension of the funky trailer I bought from a departing college student for $30 bucks.

Who knows how long I can keep this up. I'm in better shape than many men my age, but some form of decrepitude is inevitable, and I have mentioned that condo in the city once or twice. But there's an interum step that I think has real potential. You've heard of these retreats offered to corporate manager types where they remove themselves from the verticals and horizontals of office space and head for the woods to "shift their paradigms". What better way too think outside the box and achieve zen mind than stacking wood, or the focus one can gain by splitting a piece of wood right down the middle over and over again. This my friends is a goldmine in the making, as the opportunities to exchange money for sweat are endless. Thank you Tom Sawyer.

Plowing Competition

We've got about a month and a half before the draft horse plowing match occurs. The ground has softened and the top dressing laid last fall has produced a perfect grassy carpet for the days event. An event that is nearly silent.

Fifteen teams, two tons each give or take, turning a flat green field into row after row of tilled earth. Taking it in as a whole, I felt as if I was witness to a sacred ritual that begged a reverential demeanor as I approached. Moving closer, sounds were muffled to a whisper as the newly exposed soil softened every step of horse and sliding plow, leaving only the faint rattle of tack and the quiet clicks and whistles that are the language of encouragement coming from the plowman.

Man (or woman) and horse are bound to each other by more than leather reins. And as with most things, getting started is the hardest. But once the line is struck and all parts are moving, there are three minds working as one in a powerfully focused endeavor to carve the straightest furrow possible. A crescent wrench in the hip or back pocket is mandatory bling at this dance in the dirt. But the horses are the show, no mistake, and they know it. Ribbons are entwined with well combed mains and tails, and the shine on the harness setups is perfect.

A plow blade is designed to slice through the top grass and lay the soil to the side. I was mesmerized by the fluidity of the dirt as it curled up like a shore break at a good surf beach, and broke upon the previous row like a chocolate layer cake with green frosting. And as the remaining strip of grass gets thinner and thinner, those horses place each hoof, which are as big as pie tins, exactly where they should to not disturb the perfect rows of tilled earth.

Nostalgia aside for the moment, imagine how many hundreds of miles a farmer of the day would have plowed in his lifetime. And not this pristine river bottom stuff, but ground full of rocks and boulders clanging against the blade and throwing it easily off course.

There is no going back; we know this. As much as nostalgia pulls at our hearts, technology and the hunger of a growing nation pushed the horse drawn plow into the realm of all handcrafted things. And plowing a field with a team of draft horses most assuredly is created by hand and hooves, the intimacy and knowledge gained in the doing of the task now known only because of plowing competitions like this one. Although I passed through Pennsylvania Amish country a couple of years back, and they were driving teams of six horses.

Honey, Have You Seen the Mailbox?

It was just beyond twilight as I headed out to get the mail. I usually walk across the street around noon which is when the mail gal usually comes, but I got busy and put it off. She must be dyslexic or the auto-sorter at the post office is, because we are forever getting mail with the numerals transposed. I walk down the road and swap mail during daylight hours which is the only time you want to be walking on our road. We’re situated on the only long straight-away of what is mostly a pretty curvy road. People just floor it, and I’ve seen young speedsters in small souped up cars passing one another at 60 plus miles an hour, and even a few 18 wheelers blasting down our little two lane road. The same road our dog got hit on, so I’m careful not to be added to the frequent batch of road kill from the evening drag races.
After looking both ways as good mothers everywhere advise, I crossed the road to find the mailbox missing and the ground littered with small cherry red fragments, part of a side mirror, and further down the road the lens from a tail light. I gathered the auto remains and eventually found the mailbox and 4x4 post across the ditch in some bushes.

An etiquette problem arose the next day when I saw one of my neighbors pulling out of their driveway in a brand new cherry red SUV with the side mirror and tail light missing. These are tribal folk, and while I have good relations with several of the families in the area, some Indians still hold a grudge about their forefathers and mothers treatment back when we were bringing “civilization” to the west. They would rather keep their distance and have the last laugh in the form of modern day reparations at the casino down the road. The guy with the SUV was decidedly in that camp.

I replaced the mailbox and waited a few days to see if he would come over to talk about it. Didn’t happen. I debated whether I should take the bag of car parts over to him saying, “hey neighbor, I found these, could they possibly be yours?” Do you broach the situation, or let sleeping dogs lie. I opted for the latter, and nothing has changed. He still doesn’t make eye contact, and I keep hoping he will. But if it happens again, I’ll create a mailbox fortress so impervious, it won’t be quite as kind to his shiny new car or the arm of that joyriding kid with the baseball bat.

Cutlery, Guns & Knives, Oh My!

I don’t know where you come down on the whole “Gun” thing, but in my hood you can hear, at any time of the day or night, weapons being fired. Some people come home and turn on the news, or have a drink to unwind, or… fire off a few rounds of ammo from their semi-automatic as a capper to the day. I may have felt safer in the CD (Central District – a rough part of the city, for those who aren’t street wise). Speaking of, I’m not sure I’ve found the local equivalent of street wise yet, which I guess would be road wise, as I keep wondering where all those bullets are ending up.
My former neighbor is a tugboat captain. He’s got a pretty nice collection of guns, a few of which I’ve fired. A WWII German Walther pistol, his 12 gauge shotgun, and a black powder long rifle which is a subculture all its own. As a neighborly gesture, or enticement to buy some guns of my own (I’m not sure which it was), a few years ago he suggested we go down to the Gun and Knife show at the logging showgrounds about a mile down the road. But let me digress here slightly.
The sketchy hand painted road signs alerting motorists that the Gun & Knife show had returned start showing up a few days before the weekend event. At first they seemed kind of hostile and all kinds of visions came to mind. Camouflaged Rambonians emerging from the fir trees looking to upgrade, with an automatic rifle in one hand and giant serrated blade in the other. Grizzly Adams, deer hunters, survivalists – I didn’t have a clue, but envisioned this traveling road show of weaponry as quite possibly the dark underbelly of the NRA they would rather us non gun toting folk didn’t know about.
When the signs showed up again this year, something had changed. No longer the Gun and Knife Show, it was now the Gun and Cutlery Show. Pardon me… cutlery? Were they thinking they would attract the Mrs. Rambos of the world? I would like to have been a fly on the wall in the brainstorming session that suggested targeting (yuk, yuk) a what, more cultured, feminine, gay(!?) demographic. “Get real and think White”, as Jack Nickelson says in As Good As It Gets. Apparently those in command felt a kinship with that sentiment. Knife is back, and I say it’s a good thing.
Grammatically it’s all wrong to begin with. Gun and Knife show could suggest there is one gun and one knife at the show. But Guns and Knives Show is awkward. You throw cutlery into the mix and now you’ve got singular and plural crashing into one another and really, it’s just a mess.
OK, I’ve drawn this out too long as it is. We paid our five bucks and entered into a world I had no prior knowledge of – a reoccurring theme for me since moving to the country. Tables lined the walls with more tables in the middle of the room, all covered in guns and gun paraphernalia. Lots and lots of guns. Oh yes, and a few pieces of cutlery.

Dog Doo

My life up until eight years ago has been basically dog free. I never owned nor formed a relationship with anyone from the canine family. Not so any longer. I’d have to say I’ve gained an intimacy with these two redheaded mutts that surpasses most of my human relationships.
I’m not a rabid dog lover. In fact, I feel a certain clumsiness around them, and wonder if they somehow know that my intuitive sensibilities lie with cats. I’m guessing not as they still treat me with a kind of wary curiosity, and have accepted me into their pack knowing I don’t mean them any harm, having good intentions no matter how alien I might appear.
Harm - as if by not meaning to harm them, it won’t happen. This was not the case, and our lives have been permanently altered since Toby (top dog - literally) was hit by a truck. The details surrounding that gut wrenching evening are another story I may someday tell. But my relationship with Toby the golden retriever, brother of Jack our other dog, changed forever after that night. And this sets the stage for the inordinate amount of attention the rear end of this dog receives on a daily basis. He’s farting as I write.
His hips were fractured in two places from the accident, and consequently compressed. One day we noticed Toby squatting beyond the normal time it takes a dog to do its business. His narrowed pelvic region prevented him from taking a normal doggie dump. And so began the routine of 15cc’s of laxative three times a day. Not injected, no suppositories thank god, but in his food, which means he gets three meals a day and “the walk”.
The walk, while providing some exercise, helps his digestive tract get going and has evolved into a study of all aspects of K-9 crapping. Posture, tail position, ritual pre-poop circling, and of course consistency, shape and quantity of the poopers. My wife and I have entire conversations about it. This is when the carefree cat days come back to haunt me.
When we hire a dog sitter, the list of details they must follow scares off all but those who take dog care to extremes no sane individual or cat lover would dare consider.

Bitten by the Shutterbug

OK, here's a photo I took with my new Nikon d7000. When you get a good camera in your hands, well at least for me, it's hard not to imagine one's self a click away from Edward Weston.  I have been bitten once again by the shutterbug, and the welt it has left appears to be growing.

I seem to be drawn to roads. You are looking north, and those mountains are in Canada; the border is about 10 miles away. This is the crossroad of the Noon and Hemmi roads, and is one of my favorite places in Whatcom county. Someone had the forethought to put these fields under the protection of the Land Trust and that is a very good thing. Developers roam the county looking for good views and aging farmers, salivating at the vision of culdesacs sprouting for sale signs every 150 ft.

Yes, I am a transplant to this area, but bought an existing house that's over 50 years old. Not that I wouldn't love to build a place one day. Maybe in a future post we can discuss expansion, population growth, the inevitable encroachment of the masses on land that has provided so much to nourish them.

Picking & Clucking

This summer we had a stretch of hot weather, which typically melts Northwesterner's as they dwell in the 30’s to 70’s throughout the year. We hit 91° yesterday, and that was the day we decided to go pick blueberry's. With forethought on our side, we left mid morning to arrive at a lovely, mature field of organic blueberries with our sunhats and pails. At a dollar a pound we were primed to get some serious picking done. And we did, successfully avoiding sunburn and heat exhaustion. We will enjoy the bounty of our labor throughout the winter.

The owner of the field, a hearty woman with long graying hair and a passionate commitment to organic farming, had invited several of her girlfriends over to pick berries that day. Now Steph and I get down to business when we take on a project. We’re not averse to small talk while working, but we’re focused. I realized after picking for about forty five minutes that the three women picking just a few rows away had been talking non-stop the entire time! I lean toward the “celebrate the difference” camp, but eschew the men are from Mars, women are from Venus baloney, so no sweeping statements here. It's just as the morning wore on I became increasingly amazed at how much verbal ground these gals could cover without missing a berry.

If you’ve ever spent any time around chickens, you know they burble about in a loose group picking at whatever catches their eye. A steady stream of poultry inflection and tonal range pours out of their throats in a chit chatty way that comes as close to those three women’s banter as anything I’ve ever heard.

Later That Evening

There was a slight mist over the fields when I took the boys out to pee. The evening sky had stars peaking through a thin layer of clouds, and made me feel - just for a moment - calm, and happy. As my senses adjusted to the atmosphere, the individual parts of this nocturnal moment began to separate themselves and become more distinct. From the cupola of our barn the steady squawk of a parenting barn owl mingles with the muffled base line of some band warming up for the annual logging show this weekend. A wall of grass stalks is visible just at the edge of illumination cast from the motion light that the dogs triggered on their way off the porch. Out “there” at the edge, where things get soft and gray, the grass blurs as if in slight motion, and meets the infinite dark above as a fuzzy but definite line. I’m sure prescription glasses would clear this whole thing up.

The field grass is tall. Unusually tall; taller than I am. The farmer that hays our field missed the last window of sun, and the rain has dispensed with any notion of starting the methodical events that result in baled hay. “Make hay while the sun shines”– not a casual quip to a farmer. I’m always a little sad when the fields are eventually cut, as I like the cloistered feeling of being nearly surrounded; hugged by thousands of living sentinels. As a crop, this mass of verticalness arrives every year with unfailing regularity. They can’t help but reach for the sun, until a heavy rain or wind bends them in half, and their perfectly level heads, no longer form that wonderfully fuzzy horizon line against the dark firs the flank two sides of our property.

Making Hay

I grew up mostly in suburbia and my career path has always kept me in big cities. Colloquialisms like “make hay while the sun shines”, or “having a field day” were quaint sayings of another era that pretty much never came up in conversation, and if they did it was to garner a laugh. I knew they had agricultural origins, but the pragmatism of them escaped me until the first time I watched the dairy farmer up the road come and hay the field to the south of us. When I see Harold on his tractor, we’re going to have sun, or at least no rain for the next three days.

He got a loan a couple of years ago and upgraded his equipment to include some Case tractors, a new cutter, tetter, bailer, and some contraption that will lift a thousand pound bale of hay, spin it while two opposing arms loaded with plastic wrap spin on the opposite axis and set it back down looking like a very large sugar cube. Or if he’s doing 1,300 pound round bales, the field ends up looking like some giant dropped their bag of marshmallows. There is no Winslow Homer romanticism or Monet hay stacks here. This is all business, and the speedier they can get from standing grass to bale the better. The sun doesn’t have to shine as long with this kind of high-tech giddyup, and not one hand touches that hay.

DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS
The farmer that hays our field is a different kind of animal. He’s a nice guy even though he has a tattoo on his arm that says, “does not play well with others”. In contrast to the speedy newer machines, he has a much older tractor and attachments. They’re always breaking down, and we never know when he’s coming, but I’m not sure which is more satisfying to watch. No spinning, swirling, or shrink wrapping here. His bailer spits out seventy pound square bales, and when it’s time to pick it up, three or four, or if he’s lucky, five strapping young men will show up, grab those bales and toss them onto the hay wagon as it’s being slowly pulled around the field. This is called “bucking” and while slower, it has the same economy of motion as the new gear, but it comes from years, possibly generations of learned efficiency and practicality. An urban sophisticate would do well to watch and learn. The frenzied multi-tasker might gain insight by seeing a process started and finished with such methodical, tangible results.

Catch Up

I'm going to cheat here a bit as I've got quite a few written observations that occurred before this blog existed. I've done a little cut and paste job to get them into the flow as it were. Read on o' interested parties.

Here We Go.

This is the beginning of potentially the most banal and mindless ramblings on the web to date. But I've had a growing number of experiences and observations after living in rural Whatcom County for the last nine years that I can no longer keep from the world at large.

Enjoy.