On Fire

 

One thing about having so many dead trees (I've had another nine removed a month ago), I have a plethora of firewood. Last spring, we had a derecho rip though the area that took out a couple of the live trees in our yard and I cut up the one that was in a part I mow and because I still have about a 10 year supply of split and well seasoned wood from the previous 30+ trees I have cut down, I just tossed the derecho wood into a pile in the part of our lot I don't mow. I was able to burn 1/3 of the smaller branches last winter and still have two more large brush piles to burn perhaps this winter.

I tried giving away the wood but nobody is interested because it isn't split and delivered for free. So I thought I would just leave it there to burn in backyard bonfires or rot back into the earth, whichever comes first. I started a bonfire this spring around the largest piece that remained after I cut it up and it was still green enough that it only burnt up halfway and it took an armload of my seasoned wood to even get that done. So after a summer of seasoning outside, I brought up a wagon full of it to have another bonfire.

I did get one chunk of the well seasoned wood that I used to split with a hatchet into small kindling to tender the fire but the rest would slowly burn. It is still pretty green and thus burned slowly but by the next morning, all that was left was a top corner of the biggest chunk you see on top. When I threw it on the fire it was probably 18 inches in diameter, 18 inches long and weighed a good 70 pounds or so. After I got the fire going, I put the logs you see on it, along with the remains of the spring log, and it burned all evening and all through the night and is still coals this morning. By afternoon, nearly 22 hours later, all that remained were ashes.

We made use of it by roasting some bratwursts over the flames for supper while we played some croquet matches nearby. Eventually the kids got bored and went back inside and I stayed up for a good while longer watching it burn some more and contemplating life. I don't do that nearly as often as I should.