Trees

iPad drawing : Arbutus, Fir and Cedar.

I’ve been thinking a lot about trees this week.
We’re surrounded by forest.
We’re burning 2 fires a day in the cabin to keep the tulikivi soapstone stove hot (it’s still too cold to make the whole place warm.. my little studio is the warmest spot.…except for the sauna where we’ll be heading soon!).   Cedar gets it going and the dense Doug fir keeps it going,  and Arbutus if we have it burns long and hot.
H has been chopping a lot.  Usually we can use a tree that falls naturally if it’s not too far away, but of course we’ve cut some too, rotten or precarious or just because (we are sorry we didn’t cut more when we built)
Looking at the beautiful bark yesterday in the sunshine was so lovely.
It’s been so windy, we wonder what tree might come down next… like the one on the top road that fell over the wires, causing the power outage on New Years Day.  Lights blinked a lot last night…we made sure we had our lamps nearby, but all was well!
As soon as the wind dies down I’ll light our bonfire of collected branches. 

And then this morning there was this poem in The Writer’s Almanac in my inbox.  Somehow it resonated…

by David Budbill
The Woodcutter Changes His Mind

When I was young, I cut the bigger, older trees for firewood, the ones
with heart rot, dead and broken branches, the crippled and deformed

ones, because, I reasoned, they were going to fall soon anyway, and
therefore, I should give the younger trees more light and room to grow

Now I’m older and I cut the younger, strong and sturdy, solid
and beautiful trees, and I let the older ones have a few more years 

of light and water and leaf in the forest they have known so long.
Soon enough they will be prostate on the ground.

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One of my resolutions for 2017 is to learn to be more artful with my photos and also to post more iPad drawings…  and Less words,  tomorrow , I promise!