redclfco
New member
Ramblings while huddled around the morning fire
Or
The metamorphous of change
Fire is the great equalizer
Fire in the hands of a tottler can have the same power, the same level of intensity as fire in the hand of an adult.
Fire is the ultimate in fairness- fire treats everyone across the board, rich poor white black healthy sick no one is excluded from its intensity
Fire warms them all equally
But fire also burns them dead with the same gusto and enthusiasm
As it would heat an empty room
Or burn an empty room.
Fire is insidious, as I look at the flame in the fireplace
And watch the blaze as it slowly heats, then ignites my offerings.
We have a totally awesome fire place with glass doors and a passive heat gain "thing" that regains much of the flume heat. The damn thing is so big, (no joke) I could scrunch up and climb inside the thing, and it’s possible to build a fire that you can stack half split logs cris cross on the metal rack up 3 ft. high with ease! After starting a big blaze, the thing pretty well covers the heat need in this house not by flame, but by the masonry flume, now radiating heat into the house for hours after the flame is gone, and coals are burning like an exploded star.
Our woods behind the house is made up of tangled and somewhat impenetrable forest of trees; have falling soldiers everywhere of oak, ash and basswood, it makes finding enough wood to fill this cavern of a fireplace an easy and enjoyable thing to do every fall. Have you ever fell a 60 ft. dead snag and heard it as it first begin to crack as you start sawing deeper with the chain saw on the opposite back side of the wedge cut? If not, you have not seen uncontrolled power of gravity until you have seen this "gravity in motion" happen!
The ever so slight movement of the tree below the cut, and a loud pop and crack tell you to shut off the chain saw, the show is about to begin…find your footing back three paces, shut off the saw and watch as the lean of the tree increases, the cracks and pops of the tree beginning to get louder and more frequent. The roar of sound begins all at once as the tree violently heads down in a rush. Birds in tree tops 50 yards away take off in formation when the sound and rush of wind hit their tree top observations. The 60 inch round base of the tree rotating in a dangerous circle as the tree heads down…
I was lazy this morning, and took a six foot long rectangular shaped cardboard box from my recent purchase of a roof snow rake (which I totally destroyed after ten minutes raking off our copious amount of roof snow, another story) and completely soaked the box in charcoal lighter fluid, then bent it into big ninety degree angles, and smished it down flat with a big half log of oak on top of it to hold it flat on the firegrate. On top of that went another 8 or ten bigger pieces of oak and ash, and in the crevasses, I stuffed pre soaked sliver pieces of kerosene soaked fat wood, already slimy with pine tar, now dripping with kerosene, and ready to burst into flames.
Well, during the time I took to write this, the flame has surrounded the pile of half logs and now vaporized sticks of fatwood, the flames have gone to bright yellow and blue into the deep orange of the burning oak. Smoke coming out of the top of the big pile of sticks tells me the fire is well under way, and won’t go out.
I closed the door and shut the damper half way, doing my best now to slow the burn to a level the will maximize the heat gain. If you don't shut it down a bit the unrestricted full burn rushes by the masonry, and the cement and the river rock that adorns the fireplace walls never get a chance to grab the energy of the heat. I can tell how we are doing by laying my hand on the river rock and feeling the surface heat, the rock so round and oblique.
Now that tree lays in front of me, that energy is now converted into gasses igniting once again that tree and the energy held within. I dropped this tree in October, now January and I am hearing those pops and cracks again as the tree once again obtains metamorphous of change.
January 31, what a ridiculously long month, here in the land of ice and snow. The true motivation in life for 30 days or so is to hang on tight to what makes us human, the laugh the enjoyment the love of life, while the rest of the rudimentary necessities of life huddles next to the fire…
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(checks wallet) No.
