Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography - Oak Aromas Rising in Stereo

Oak Aromas Rising in Stereo

It's 82 degrees inside the cabin. The fire was built too ambitiously an hour ago. So the north panel was opened to purge over-heated air. The night sounds are nice. Sitting far from the stove in the corner where the windows converge at my back, the 48-degree outside temperature pestered me to throw on another chunk of wood. I got up to do that, but couldn't get near enough, too hot.

A few minutes ago I heard--mixed in with my own noise, what I thought was a coyote off in the woods through the north screen. When I paused, the noise did not repeat. Figuring it was only an aberrant breeze, or EZ releasing gas, I returned to my reading. As EZ creaked position on the floor, it sounded again. I paused, she settled, but silence was full, and I heard it no more. Now the wind is blabbing through oak limbs and the wolfish "whoo-oooo" can't be heard even though it's still out there somewhere.

Worked good today. Arose about 8:30 after an hour of dozing with public radio's Sunday Morning. (Frank Stachio is fine because he's a familiar NPR voice, but he is not Liane Hansen) I muddled into the cabin and set water heating. EZ squirmed her morning routine on the ground, writhing side to side on her back as though to propel herself somewhere. I studied the coffee water, twisting and oozing into itself, excited by a blue propane hiss. Six spoons of Folgers, stir roundly. Then let it steep. Brush teeth, fling the toothpaste water out the cabin door, then sit beside last night's smoldering ashes and smoke the day's first cigarette. Coffee done enough, I return to sit outside, listening to nothing; a world gone soundless in September's balmy calm. Inner voices urge me to be better and more dynamic, more certain of myself; to hurry up and decide what I want to be when I grow up.

The lawnmower has a CD-ish spider web hovering above it, mid-air between handle and starter cord. Fascinating finery performed during the night. Silver sun shimmers, radiating illusory spokes of light away from the center. Swaying lightly, like none I've ever seen before. Half the size of a compact disc and constructed of tightly wound strands giving the appearance of record album grooves. Each thread is much finer than hair and connected by filaments, like spokes, radiating from the middle. I count 54 circular strands and 44 supporting webs. And one tiny spider tiptoeing dead-center.

EZ and I circuit A ROAD LES TRAVELED, a pocket walk in search of an oak tree. I've decided to construct a log bench beside the river where I swam as a child in July. That was when, clearing the bank of grown up tag alders and brush, I rediscovered what an enchanting spot it is. But, it needs a place to sit. Squatting is inconvenient. Sitting on the ground can be annoyingly wet, and standing, by nature, is hum-drum. A bench begs to be built and set there.

Oak furniture provides density and longevity, and is enthusiastically satisfying. Its aroma, when freshly cut, elicits woodsy truths. It is dense enough to last for years without maintenance, if raised away from the soil, which wants to rot it.

I found the perfect tree toward the back of the trail; close by the path for easy car access, straight enough for a five-foot bench, and big enough for a butt surface of eight inches.

Chainsaw gassed and oiled. Dog shooed far back out of range. The fully live oak was cut through. It tipped then stopped, leaning against a larger oak, requiring the cant hook to twist it away from the clutch of its neighbor.

A cant hook is a tough lumberjack tool. It grips its prey similar to an ice hook, but has a 3-foot long handle for leverage. Oak crowns are gnarly and thick, and especially difficult to separate when two trees tightly embrace high out of reach. Confidence in cant hooks can be over-rated, especially when foliage is full and the tree I am trying to conquer gangs up with a forest mate.

Cant hook couldn't. Woodsman prowess knows limits. A wise man also knows to surrender when two tons of ripe tree is poised to do bad things to a lumberjack cursing (and a dog barking) at it down below.

To hell with it. Let wind and weather take it down. I set about sawing sections off the leaning trunk, working my way up, backing away quickly as chunks tipped off and the rest of the tree moved toward its host and stood straighter. I sawed off a five-foot section and removed a horizontal slab off its top for the sitting surface. Then cut two support chunks, eighteen-inches long with notches and flat bottoms to minimize rocking. All was relatively level and ready, and the car was brought around.

It is an old car. It has cruised Minnesota interstates and is suffering badly the effects of northern winter salt roads, is weary, but willing. It's Japanese and even has four wheel drive if I need it. It's rusted and loose-jointed as geezers should be. But it works, and answers my coaxing with grace and transports heavier loads than I could all at once.

Today it's asked to reverse into hummocky woods, over branches and through brush, to carry a freshly cut oak bench and two supports, a chainsaw and shovel and two cement sidewalk blocks, out of the woods and down to the swimming hole. It did fine. EZ had no place to ride. She stood outside the cabin and watched me drive out the driveway, scanning in confusion over my leaving without her. I whistled, she came and ran ahead, barking.

I carried the supports first. Light and easy. Then the cement slabs, cascades of wormy soil raining down into hair and the back of my T-shirt. Then the chainsaw. Then the sitting log.

Things went together impossibly easy. Square sidewalk blocks placed down against the grassy soil. Then supports, then ... OOPS, bench notches need widening, then lift and re-set. There's a slight rocking to the southwest, and the west end is higher than the east. So, lift it, rotate 180 degrees, set it down, nudge, rock, settle. And it's done. Break for a smoke. Set up the camera. Set the timer and ... sit.

This is nice. A place to sit where none ever was before. Oak grain, wet with growth two hours ago, bright and ripe, beginning a new life of utility.

1:45 p.m.--

Red's Shed needed another roof. I awoke this morning after a night's rain and saw plywood drooling in the northwest corner. Excess materials from the cabin's re-roofing will do. The sleeper has never leaked, nor has it allowed small animals in once I plugged a hole three years ago. Porcupines have carefreely chewed its exterior. And it needs a new roof.

So school studies, brought along from classes begun two weeks ago, must wait.

Roofing was cut into thirteen-foot lengths, re-rolled and carried atop, flattened out and nailed. I noticed a dying birch tree leaning over the roof and needing some help getting down, rather than breaking itself onto the sleeper during high winds. Its incline was noticeable, but surely I'll be able to push against it, influence it, coax it to fall away while it's cut. But, standing at the corner of the sleeper and looking up, watching the wind sway it over the roof, I decided to take a more circumspect look at the matter before it mattered.

Pushing while sawing didn't work. The sleeper was too far for good shoulder leverage. Maybe I could tie a good sturdy rope high up and tie it to the bumper of the car, then drive the car toward where I wanted it to fall, set the brakes and hope for the best.

Yes but, the rope isn't longer than the tree. It'll fall on the car, assuming you actually have all the tension pulled right to keep the tree from falling across the sleeper.

Maybe I could get EZ to stand against it on hind legs.

No. She'd run away.

What if I tied the rope to a tree, with lots of tightness, at the angle I want it to fall?

That's fine. That'll prevent it from falling on the sleeper, but then it's anybody's guess which of the other 180 degrees it's going to go. Besides, there isn't a tree within reach of the rope.

Okay. What if I tie the rope around the dead tree laying on the ground over there, where I want the birch to fall, then lean something heavy, say, another dead tree, at an angle, down onto the rope? As my cutting weakens the birch, the constant downward tension of the rope pulling it's weight toward the ground will pull the dying birch toward the direction of the rope. Once it's falling that way there's no need for further tension. It'll land exactly on target.

Good thinking. But what have you forgotten?

I don't know. Pray?

Wouldn't hurt.

Yes it would. Would give God the idea that I'm not independently sufficient.

So, I got the fifty-foot rope out of the cabin and climbed on Red's Shed and tied it, from a ladder propped from the roof to the tree. As high as I could reach. The sleeper quivered and creaked and the birch tree swayed above and the ladder held on by ignorance and bliss.

(God fails to let me down like I would if I was God.)

Tied a loop in the rope halfway up, and secured the other end to the dead tree on the ground. Scrounged for a heavy leaning-log and came up with a ten-foot end of the birch taken down in August. I propped it high with the heavy end against the rope; a branch stub was shoved through the loop to hold it in place.

The rope sagged, the tree straightened. I had to gentle my ministrations since the tip-top of the tree was seriously weak. Too much agitation and the top would begin to whip, cracking and tumbling in a perilous fall. Everything was ready. EZ, who was following this preparation laying in green grasses, must've been right with me on it all, because she not once offered remedial feedback, or even looked doubtful.

I crossed my fingers, started the chainsaw, and moved in on the assault. Like painting a living room ceiling or having a baby, most of the work happens before the final act. I began sawing, watching the rope and the leaning dead log for signs of movement, or untidy reverse reaction. The tree abruptly obeyed the pull to the left, arced soundlessly and landed straight across the rope that had pulled it. So utterly pleasing to have a thought-out plan actually go exactly according to how the mind's eye saw it.

6:05-

Sitting on the new bench by the river. Pungent fresh oak aromas rising in stereo left and right. Not many people consider fresh cut oak to be a nice smell. It's an acquired taste, so to speak, one that a person grows into from childhood, like deep-fried monkey nostrils, or pickled herring and baked potato for Christmas breakfast. The fragrance of ripe oak has been known to make people swoon, but for quite opposite reasons. It's especially sweet when arising from fresh-cut furniture one has carved out for sitting, and stationed near a streambank.
11:10-

Tired of being awake. The flashlight was forgotten in the sleeper where it wasn't needed this morning because it was daylight out, so the video camera's infrared must light my way.
EZ has been following. I hear her close behind. Finding the sleeper, I open the door wide and say "okay."

She cautiously advances toward my voice, but is acting hesitant, as though a monster is kneeling inside and ready to pounce. Then I realize she is not a cat and may be nearly as blind in the dark as I. She can't see the doorway in the blackness. So I slap my hand on the floor to give her a sound clue and she jumps in and settles at the center of my side of the bed.

I ask her to "go back." Repeatedly. But she's an elderly golden retriever with years of experience looking clueless and dear when she knows what I want, but doesn't want it herself. I gesture and coax, "g'wan, go back," then again realize she probably can not see hand signals and may be willing to "g'wan, go back," but doesn't know which direction I'm pointing.

Putting stuff down, I grunt myself up and inside and fetch my lighter and attempt--while aiming through the camera--to strike it flaming. Angle it down to the nearest candle wick, and it runs out of fuel. Exasperation begins a low scream down deep inside me, then increases to medium as EZ starts snoring, on the driver's side of the bed. A long handled lighter, graciously, is hanging on a nail on the west end of the shelter.

The candle is lit.

"Go back."

"Go BACK!" I point an index finger six inches over her head. She gives me a sultry look.

"Go back!"

She rises with much show and grunty impertinence, does a complete circle atop my sleeping bag and drops herself with a hefty exhale in exactly the same spot she'd just got out of.

"No. Go back."

She knows the gig is up. Relinquishing, finally, she crawls to her spot by the window, lays her nose on the orange nylon sleeping bag and discharges a gasp.

Monday--

7:45 a.m.-

EZ has jostled me awake. She is alert with her head up looking toward the window, staring intently outside, watching something thrilling. Her ears are high and her head is twitching with slight angle adjustments, monitoring movements outside. Shivery spasms. Deer meandering through the clearing?

I fight my way out of the bedding and air mattress, which became irresolute during the night. Crashing noises sound outside and two wide-eyed deer streak past the glass. EZ thinks what I'm up to is preparing to pay her attention. She sinks onto her back, puts her front legs up in the air, hairy paws bent horizontal--the doggy equivalent of doe-eyed television children begging good Christian households to mail off another large payment to a third world garbage-pickin' Children's Fund.

So I cave in to her appeal and stroke her chest. Massage the fur, and speak tender good mornings. We do like each other quite a bit. Then lay a corner of my quilt across her tummy, tell her to "go back to sleep," and head for the door. She's up on four legs and out the door in one swift motion.

I don't have to explain when I come home with lots of a red-head's hair all over me.

While the coffee is steeping I think to check the mouse-poison cakes put out in August. Both formulas, and all ten cakes have been gnawed, some more than others. The packet of D-con pellets has been littered out on its shelf. But there are no legs-in-the-air corpses.

Slime-coated Blatz | Contents