Some days it doesn’t even pay to own your own mountain.
My “wood guy” does, an honest-to-God, great big hulking mountain, where he cuts the standing dead and lightning-felled piñon that burns so well. Last year I didn’t use paper or kindling to start my fires most days, just a chunk of pitchwood ignited with a single match! But now my heating strategy for the winter is shot to hell: sometime in the last few days, a gang of thieves drove five trucks up to where he’d cut and stacked the wood we were expecting and made off with the lot. I don’t know how much they got, or how much of it was marked for us, but the word is we may be on our own for wood this year.
Major bummer, if that’s the way it works out, and not just because of my long checkered history with firewood sellers. The stories I could tell… One guy had a parrot in the kitchen, and when I’d call his wife for another load, the bird would screech so loud, she’d never get the order right. Another charmer brought me nasty green chunks an atom bomb wouldn’t split, shorted me half a cord he promised to replace, and never did.
Woodpile at San Cristobal, winter of 2001
But this one is my friend, my age, damn near mystical and smart in all the ways I’m not. He brings me chopping blocks. He saves the most incendiary pieces just for me, the ones with crystalized gobs of resin that stink like turpentine. He has a gold mine and carries a gun. He can ride a wild horse and drive a jeep up a cliff. For Christ’s sake, he has his own mountain. And he just got robbed…
UPDATE, Oct. 18, 2010:
No, he didn’t get robbed! Well, a group of guys did take the wood, but they thought they were on BLM land, not private property. My friend finally caught up with them after spending almost a week going out to the ranch before dawn to walk three miles of property line. Evidently they were as embarrassed as only honest men can be, out here in the wild West, especially. If I’m not mistaken (I don’t have all the details yet), he was so happy to learn they weren’t thieves, he gave them permission to finish cutting on his land.
What a resounding resonance that has. I don’t want to analyze it, either, just let it be.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Most humans are more or less honest, though capable of succumbing to an infinitude of the world’s moral hazards – an untended woodpile, a car with key in the ignition, a wallet lying in the street. I’d put thieves of that ilk in a less fiery circle of perdition. These guys with the fat wallets and heavy machinery are something else. Judge Roy Bean woulda strung ‘em up.
Yeah, this is really bad.
The irony is that we’re surrounded by trees, gazillions of ‘em. Piñon is the best firewood, IMO, and it costs the most. Must be worth stealing, especially if the seasoned wood worth harvesting is getting scarce in areas open to public cutting.
Nah, pinon is the worst firewood imaginable. A pinon tree takes close to 100 years to mature, and the wood burns much too fast and with relatively little heat.
Take a look at some 19th c. New Mexico towns/ landscapes–the hillsides are completely bare and you have to wonder how far people had to go to get wood.
OTOH in 20th c. photos–after other fuels superseded wood– the hillsides are covered with pinon and cedar.
IMO the best firewood by far is eucalyptus–as heavy and dense as oak or the other hardwoods, but so full of oil it catches nearly as quickly as pine/pinon. It burns long and it burns HOT, and it grows like a weed.
When I lived in L.A. I could heat my small apartment on three (3) euc logs per winter evening–and even then I sometimes had to open the back door to cool off.
If I had the money I’d buy me some acres in southern NM and plant euc, and work to wean New Mexicans off their dependence on pinon & cedar except for ceremonial/holiday occasions.
I LOVE piñon. “Relatively little heat”?? You might be thinking of ponderosa pine. A stove full of glowing piñon is like a runaway nuclear reactor: shut the door on it at night, and in the morning start a fresh fire from the coals. Go to the Search thingie and type in “piñon,” then stand back. The wood is like a religion with me, and I preach a lot.
You’re right about the bare hillsides, though. For that matter, look at photos of just about any 19th century towns in this country, and you’ll see plenty of bare hills…
Oh I know from pinon, believe me, since it’s virtually the only wood available here (I live in Burque) but I also know euc from the years I lived in L.A.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I love pinon–this is my favorite time of year here, with roasting chile perfuming the air during the day and pinon smoke predominating at night, but it’s because I love pinon so much that I worry about it.
It really is very, very slow growing–close to 100 years for a pinon tree to achieve full growth and as you know they’re barely bigger than a good-sized bush even then. It’s also dying off at a scary rate; every time I take the train back to my native Illinois I cringe at all the dead or dying pinon on the mountainsides, Raton Pass etc. I believe I’ve read that some kind of beetle is the proximate cause, feeding on trees already weakened by environmental factors.
Anyway, the idea of euc farms in the southern part of the state is just a pipe dream, but it’s a nice one. Unlike salt cedar and other invasive foreign species, euc would be as self-limiting as the pecans that are grown there now, and it really is superior firewood.
Ah, pardon me.
Well, I’ve never burned eucalyptus, so what do I know? I’d like to know more about it. Back East I considered it a real coup when I could burn cherry: burns long and hot, smells wonderful.