by Dylan Tomine
I have plenty of incentive to split wood before work. The average winter temperature in my unheated office hovers around forty degrees, and twice this month it has dropped enough that I had to break ice stalagmites from the sink. A quick chopping session gets the blood moving before I sit down at my desk. Maybe you’ve heard the old saying about firewood warming you twice – when you split it and when you burn it? In my experience, it’s more like five times: cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, and carrying it to the house all produce more than a little body heat. Add in the actual burning, and we’re up to six. That’s a lot of warmth from one log.
A friend (and fellow wood rat) once wondered aloud why people spend money on both presplit cordwood delivery and gym memberships. I said it must save them time, and he pointed out that going to the gym isn’t without impact on the day planner. True. On the other hand, guys who spend time in the gym tend to look better without shirts on than I do. And their workouts carry significantly less risk of ending with a hand-forged Scandinavian ax head imbedded in their shins. I’m okay with that. I just have to work carefully and keep my shirt on.
Right now, though, I’m concerned with this year’s wood supply. A convergence of factors – the cold weather, my desire to have a warmer house (which seems to be increasing as I get older) and fishing too much last year – has created something of an inventory shortfall. Of course, it’s not like we’re going to freeze. We can always crank up the furnace, which we’re already doing at a rate directly proportional to the woodpile shrinkage, but it feels like cheating. More importantly, running the furnace 24/7 would put a dent in our bank account I’m not sure we could repair. Somehow, I’m going to have to find that rarest of winter commodities in our dripping forest: dry, ready-to-burn trees. I need a miracle.
A month ago, my friend Travis, in the process of showing off his new, state-of-the-art, all-steel peavey (a lever-and-swinging hook contraption for moving logs around), casually mentioned that he might know where to find some dry timber. I let it pass, not wanting to sound too eager and unsure of his firewood expertise. For all I knew, he could be a greenwood burner. I might have been a little jealous of the gleaming peavey, too. Then the conversation got a little more serious. We debated the merits of full-skip chain-saw chains (fewer cutting teeth, higher speed, more danger) and moved on to a maul vs. wedge discussion. Finally, I asked, “What do you think of hemlock?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Hate it,” he declared. Okay, then.
“So, about that dry wood…” I asked, trying to sound as if I could take it or leave it. “Yeah,” he said, “I think it’s good to burn now, but it’s ugly. I mean, big, old gnarly firs that’ve been down for three years. In a huge pile.” Then he brightened: “We’ll definitely need the peavey.” He said he’d call when he was ready, but I didn’t hold my breath.
Travis calls just as I’m loading the woodstove and fighting to tamp down my desperation over our meager wood supply. I’m still skeptical of finding dry wood on the ground anywhere in western Washington, but I grab my cutting gear and drive to the site through a light flurry of snow.
I can see that he was right about at least one thing: It’s ugly. And dangerous. Travis is standing on the road when I arrive, looking up at a logjam of enormous second-growth fir trees, each trunk held off the ground by others and clearly under tension in multiple directions. No wonder nobody’s claimed them.
We walk around the pile several times, trying to figure out the angles and pressure points. Gradually, a strategy for dismantling the logjam becomes clear, like the solution to a complicated equation. First, using a measuring stick and pruning saw, we mark 16-inch lengths along all the exposed logs. Then I climb up to the top of the pile with a light chain saw to cut away limbs while Travis clears space at ground level with his big saw. When the top trees are free of branches, we use the peavey to roll them down off the pile and into cutting position.
Snow keeps falling, and soon we’re working in a wonderland of white light and muffled sound. It’s a rare cold, dry snow, a welcome relief from the usual muddy quagmire of winter cutting. The rounds are monstrous, some of them so thick that the 24-inch saw bar can’t reach all the way through, and each 16-inch length hits the ground with a thud we can feel through our boot soles. We’re going to have to quarter the rounds in place just to move them. I start in with the maul and wedges, first splitting each round in half, then in half again. If I bend my legs and hug each quarter-round to my chest, I can just barely stand and stagger up to the road with it.
Some miraculous combination of how the logs were suspended above the wet ground and their intact bark has kept the wood dry and perfectly cured. I tap two smaller pieces together and the hollow, ringing sound confirms our hopes. You couldn’t get better firewood if you dried it in a kiln. I feel like we’ve struck gold. “You were right, Travis,” I say. “This is unbelievable.” He could easily say, “I told you so,” but he just shrugs, flips his face shield down, and goes back to cutting.
After I wrestle a particularly heavy quarter round onto the tailgate, I lean over, sweat dripping onto my glasses and my lower back going numb. My breath comes in ragged jets of steam, the last few puffs drifting in the still air like small, individual clouds. I’m beat. While I try to recover, I count growth rings on the quarter-round, losing track after 100, with many more to go. This tree somehow survived the rise and fall of the sawmill in Blakeley Harbor (once the largest in the country) and another at Port Madison; the clearing of land for strawberry farms in the early twentieth century; and, finally, the more recent clearing for the Island’s newest product, suburban sprawl. It’s strange to think of everything this old tree lived through, only to come down on a windy day three years ago.
There’s still the small matter of getting the wood home. I strap the kid seats to the roof to make more space, then fill the cargo area, backseat, and shotgun seat to the ceiling. With night falling, I’m only going to get one trip in today, so I want to make it count. One last, massive quarter round goes on my lap, and after a quick run-through to make sure I can still steer and work the gearshift, I shout goodbye to Travis and pull onto the road. The car smells like a Christmas tree farm.
No matter how dry I think the wood might be, I won’t know for sure until it’s in the stove. And, like a kid with a new toy, I can’t wait to try it out. I turn the floodlights on in our driveway, unload the quarter rounds, and get to work. Splitting wood turns out to be a lot more fun when I’m going to burn it in 15 minutes instead of 15 months. Skyla and Weston come outside to watch, and when I ask them to start carrying wood to the house, they disappear into the backyard.
The kids come back a minute later, dragging their bright orange plastic sled through two inches of snow. Great idea! Why didn’t I think of it? I guess you have to live farther north – or possess the open mind of a child – to see how snow might work to your advantage. We load the clean, freshly split wood into the sled and they mush it to the house with ease.
Stacy already has a pile of hot, glowing coals going in the stove. She puts in two pieces of the new wood, shuts the door and opens the air intake. In less than 30 seconds, the stove fills with flames. I open the door to listen for hissing steam but hear only crackling fire and the occasional snap and pop. A sense of satisfaction completely out of proportion to the simple act of cutting wood and burning it settles over me.
Do we have enough to last through the winter? I doubt it. But the house is warm, the stove’s roaring, and it’s almost time for dinner. That seems like plenty for now.
CRAB FOR CHRISTMAS
It’s the day before Christmas Eve and I’m alone in the boat off the south end of the Island, miles from where we usually set our pots. I don’t know if there are any crabs here, or for that matter, where to start looking. The calm-weather forecast is holding up, though, so I’m making short sets and moving the pots around, searching for signs of life in unfamiliar waters.
My plan is to soak the pots overnight, hope the weather ho
lds, and come back with the kids in the morning to harvest our Christmas Eve dinner. Of course, as with most of my plans, there are complicating factors: We’ll need to have the boat back on the trailer by 11:00 a.m. so we can drive to the ferry dock and pick up my mom and her husband, Carey, who are coming from California for the holidays. Which is why I’m crabbing here. It’s the only place close enough to town that we can make our pickup time.
When Skyla was born, my mom decided distance wasn’t going to keep her from a close relationship with her granddaughter. For seven years, she has come the 1,000 miles from her home nearly once a month to be here with Skyla and, later, Weston. My mom doesn’t mess around, either. She comes to work. Within minutes of her arrival, she jumps into our family routine, always quick to change a diaper (in the early days), wash dishes, or indulge the kids with pure, undivided attention. They call her Bachi, Skyla’s first pronunciation of the Japanese word for grandmother, obachan. Carey goes by Jichi, for jichan, or grandfather. Last month, they were in New York to help my brother and Sarah after Nora was born, making this the longest time between visits we’ve ever had. The kids and I agree: Fresh winter crab would be the best way to celebrate their arrival.
I set a string of four pots, and when the final one goes in, I circle back to check the first. After pulling 80 feet of line into the boat, I look over the gunwale through 15 feet of clear winter water to see the mottled, dark red backs of rock crabs filling the pot. Not a single Dungeness. I’m going to have to move my pots. I reach inside to release the unwanted rock crabs, but in my haste – I’m already thinking of where to try next – I get careless. The last crab somehow reaches back with a meaty pincer, grabs my thumb, and crushes down. The pain is shocking. I flail around the boat, shouting and hopping up and down until the crab finally releases its grip and splashes into the water. To anyone observing, I’m sure it’s the best thing they’ll see all day.
I am four years old, poking at a bucket full of crawdads with a stick. It’s a warm autumn afternoon and my mom and dad are both there on the riverbank with me. We are excited about the unexpected bonanza – a deer carcass in shallow water, covered with crawdads. My dad is catching them and dropping them in the bucket. He tells me to be careful, but I ignore him, completely absorbed by the scuttling creatures and their ominous claws. By my four-year-old calculations, the stick is plenty long enough. Then the biggest crawdad in the bucket reaches up with astonishing speed and clamps onto my tiny finger…
As I motor south in search of a better spot, the memory fades, but lingers in the back of my mind. I distractedly drop two pots just off the beach in open water, handling the lines gingerly with my sore thumb. Then, lacking any real strategy and running out of daylight, I dump the other two pots in a protected bay farther to the south. I cross my fingers and hope I’m lucky.
In the morning, a stiff breeze rustles through the ferns and huckleberry shrubs outside the house. So much for the forecast. Man plans, Mother Nature laughs. But our outing still looks doable. Marginal, but doable. The kids are already up, bouncing through the house singing “Jingle Bells” as they search for mittens and hats. Weston asks if he can have a candy cane to bring in the boat. Skyla wants to know if I’m wearing my lucky fishing necklace. There’s way too much excitement to bail. Might as well hook up the boat and go take a look.
I am seven years old, on a picnic at the lake with my parents. I want to fish so badly I can’t sit still through lunch; each bite takes an eternity to chew and swallow. My eyes do not leave the water. Finally, I am casting the new yellow bass plug I ordered from Herter’s and paid for with allowance money. After a hundred, a thousand, a million casts into this unlikely-looking water, the lure seems to pull back, and miraculously, a three-pound smallmouth bass leaps into the air. “Mom! Dad!” I shout, “I got one!”
Beyond the riffled surface of the harbor, a small wind chop is building outside. Less than ideal, but safe – at least for the time being. We only need to run about a mile down the beach in open water to the first pots, then into the sheltered bay for the others. We’ll have to go more slowly than I planned, but I think we’ll have just enough time to pull the pots and make it back to pick up the grandparents.
We hit the bigger stuff just outside the last channel marker, and I cut back to half throttle. I worry the pounding might be too much for the kids, but after a few minutes to adjust, they’re having a great time. Two pairs of small, mittened hands grip the bow rail as they lean into the wind, smiling. I realize my jaw has been clenched tight since we launched, and it feels good to let it relax.
Above us, a swollen cloud cover hangs almost low enough to touch. Below, the water churns and swirls, reflecting the gunmetal sky. It’s tough to tell whether the spray speckling my glasses is rain or saltwater. To the west, at the base of dark, fir-covered hills, buttery light pours from the windows of beach houses, and Christmas lights twinkle on the eaves. A quarter mile offshore, the wind still carries a hint of wood smoke.
I am 11 years old. It’s the week before Christmas, my parents are divorced, and I have spent an entire year trying without success to catch a steelhead. All I want – at least that I can articulate – is a steelhead. Desperate to help her fish-crazed son, my mom has called Andy Landforce, the legendary Oregon guide, for help. And now, he is rowing his old wooden drift boat, I am standing in the bow, and I have a fish on. A steelhead. I am terrified of losing it. When the fish surges away and runs far downstream, my heart pounds like it’s going to explode.
I can’t find the first set of pots. We zigzag around the area where I thought I dropped them: 110 feet of water off the house with the green roof. But no buoys. Time ticks away; my internal pressure builds. Maybe the tide dragged them off, maybe someone else picked them up.
“There it is! Way over there,” Skyla shouts, pointing to a distant speck of orange, the flag marker on top of our pot buoy. It was the other house with a green roof.
We pull alongside the buoy, and Skyla reaches over the port-side bow, grabs the buoy pole and passes it back to Weston, who passes it to me. I’m happy to see they remember our routine from last summer, and everything goes smoothly, in spite of the boat’s heaving motion. I pull a suspiciously light pot to the surface and it comes over the side empty. Nada. Zip. Zero. Three sets of shoulders slump. But when I open the pot door to get rid of the bait, both kids brighten. “Dad, can I throw the salmon head over the side?” Weston asks. “I’ll throw the tail and skeleton,” Skyla says. They proceed with gusto, and I remind myself of the same old lesson, The path is the goal.
Our second pot comes up with more resistance, and I’m cautiously hopeful when my arms and back start burning with exertion. The kids are watching me, trying to gauge my effort as an indicator of what might be in the pot. When most of the line is in the boat, they crouch along the gunwale and peer into the water, watching and waiting.
“I see it, Daddy, I see it,” Skyla hollers.
“Anything in it?” I ask between labored breaths.
“Yeah,” she says, “It’s…it’s a…YAAAAAAAY! We got a humongous starfish! And it’s purple!”
I take a deep breath and tell myself again: The path. It’s always the path.
The kids pull the giant sunflower star from the pot, and it takes both of them to lift it, water streaming down their arms. They shed their soaked mittens to feel its rough surface and giggle when hundreds of tiny suction feet pull at their skin. I take a picture of them holding up their prize, beaming with excitement beneath a darkening sky.
I glance at my watch. We have 45 minutes to find and pull the remaining pots, get them lashed down safely, and make it back to the ramp. At half throttle, assuming the building chop doesn’t slow us down even more, it’s going to be tight. At least we’ll have the wind behind us on the way back; we can run faster in following seas.
When we turn into the lee of Restoration Point, the wind falls out and the surface of the small bay flattens to a silvery sheen. We can make up some time here, and I
already see our buoys in the calm water ahead. I am focused on making a beeline to the pots when Weston shouts, “Dad, stop!” I cut the throttle to see what the problem is.
“Look over there,” he says, “Santa Claus is crabbing, too!” There’s another boat in the bay. It’s a big old Glasply, the classic workhorse boat of Puget Sound, and sure enough, standing in the back at an electric pot puller is a big man with a white beard wearing a fur-trimmed red velvet hat. The kind of Santa hat you can buy at the drugstore for $2.99…or have made by elves in your workshop at the North Pole. We wave and the man smiles, waves back, and yells, “Ho, ho, ho!”
Our second set of pots lies in 75 feet of water about halfway into the bay. We can work easily here, protected from the wind and current of the open Sound. I’m not fooled, though. On the ridge to the south, big firs bend and sway, and behind us the waves are starting to turn white on top.
I charge up to the buoy, throw the motor into neutral, and we get to work. The kids pass the flag back and I start hand-over-handing the line as fast as I can. It feels heavy, but with the giant starfish fresh in my memory, I try not to get too excited. Skyla sees it first. “Crabs!” she says. “I see crabs in the pot!” And when it gets closer to the surface, “Dungies, too! Keepers!”
Success. We haul the pot – loaded with pale-purple Dungeness crabs – into the boat. “Oh, those are dandies!” Weston says. We sort through the pile, each kid taking turns releasing the undersize and female crabs, being extra careful to avoid the pincers. When the pot’s clear, we have four big, hard-shelled keepers in the bucket. Not the mother lode, but a good score. And we know that these winter crabs will be packed with firm, sweet flesh, more succulent and cleaner tasting than the ones we get in summer. They will make a special dinner.
The last pot yields three more keepers. We’re done. We’re also late. I pour each kid a cup of hot apple cider from the thermos, then quickly stack the pots and tie them down for the rough ride home. The last thing we want is loose pots flying around a bucking boat. Skyla and Weston sip their drinks and crouch around the bucket of crabs, poking at them cautiously. “Be careful,” I say. “One might reach up and grab you.” I have become my father.
