Mark delivers my firewood. I call him on his cell phone, tell him I need a cord, he says ok and within a week he shows up with his pick-up loaded, nearly dragging with fresh cut oak. He tosses the wood into a pile in the backyard with a steady rhythm of dull clinks as each piece of oak hits oak until there is a pile about five feet high: a split oak pyramid.
A day or two later, as soon as I have a couple of hours, I transform the pile into a stack. With a wheelbarrow I move a dozen pieces at a time from the back yard to a spot closer to the back door, convenient on cold evenings, or even mildly chilled evenings.
When I order wood, Mark delivers a load that is damn close to a cord. A full cord is 128 cubic feet, usually measured as a stack that is 4 ft. wide, 4 ft. high and 8 ft. long. When I stack the wood Mark delivers it is 2 ft wide, a little over 5 ft high and about 11 ft long, so it is damn close to being a cord.
As I stack piece after piece, it is easy to look at each one carefully while keeping a steady pace since I hold each one twice: once to put it in the wheelbarrow and once to place it on the stack. Every piece is jagged with its pattern of splits determined by knots or the base of limbs that cause the rock hard oak to splinter in odd shapes at irregular angles. Yet, when they stack, with no particular maneuvering on my part, they each seem to fall into place easily, neatly, snuggly against the one below and on each side so the stack becomes a near perfect box shape.
In the waning light of the warm Florida February afternoon, working in bare feet, I wonder just when will I touch each piece of wood the third time. It will be when I stack several pieces in the crook of my arm and carry them to the hearth. Some may be burned in the last few weeks of winter; others will lie patiently waiting until the first chills of autumn a full nine months away. When I stack one particular smooth and dense piece, I wonder what in my world will have changed before I touch that piece again, before I select that piece to burn.
I know there is no way to know, but I like knowing there’s wood to burn.
