ESSAY: Firewood Happens

By Mike Lein

I firmly believe every cabin should have a real wood stove, not just one of those gas fireplaces with the fake logs. A good EPA-approved stove won’t be cheap and your insurance agent will cringe when you mention it. But don’t worry. There are other agents who understand the situation. Here in the north woods, firewood happens. It might as well heat the home.

Firewood happens when thunderstorms and blizzards rearrange the forest, sending future firewood falling from the sky like manna from heaven—and landing on the cabin, the outhouse, or even the new SUV. This will make that insurance agent whine even more. Forget him for the moment and deal with the firewood.

When firewood doesn’t accidentally happen, hunting wild firewood is an option. State and national forests allow firewood collection subject to permits and regulations. It’s a lot like prospecting for precious metals. You might happen upon a motherlode of dried oak right next to the road. Or you may come up empty-handed with a broken chainsaw and an expensive towing bill from getting too adventurous. I have soured on this method given adventures like these and the fact that the prime firewood gathering season happens to coincide with fishing season, grouse season, and deer season.

When my supply of home-grown firewood gets low, I scrounge local sawmills for slab wood. Slab wood is the exterior wood and bark left over from slicing dimension lumber out of raw logs. This method of making firewood happen sounds cheap and simple, without the hazards of foraging in the dark and dangerous forest. But it isn’t always that way. Seeking out firewood bargains requires an adventurous soul, willing to drive down miles of potholed and washboarded back roads, hot on the trail of rumored stacks of seasoned oak.

One such snowy December adventure led me to a sawmill on a family farm. A shepherd-Lab-crossbreed-mutt farm dog rose from the front steps to greet me as I exited my truck. Many years of knocking on farmhouse doors to deal with sensitive environmental issues have left me leery of this specific type of dog. This one was an obvious exception. It greeted me with a wagging tail and I continued on to the back door with my new friend.

Before I could knock, a shadowy figure waved at a side window and motioned me to enter. The door opened to an entryway/mudroom cluttered with the accumulated debris of early winter rural life—warm boots with liners pulled out and drying, several well-used shotguns and deer rifles half exposed in unzipped cases, worn work coats, overalls, gloves, hats, and drying socks were hung from hooks and draped across old chairs.

The mystery man was in the kitchen, in the midst of cooking breakfast with one hand while doing business on a cordless phone with the other. This was no high-class joint. The cook’s uniform was an old hooded sweatshirt of blue-plaid flannel, farm store jeans, and a dark baseball cap. It didn’t matter. Breakfast smelled just fine. A flannel-clad arm motioned me to the kitchen table and poured me a cup of coffee as the phone call ended.

“Hey,” he said, sticking out the non-spatula hand. “I’m Kenny. How’d you like your eggs?”

As it turns out, Kenny and I had a lot in common. It took most of two hours to close the deal on a couple of bundles of birch slabs. Most of the time was spent swapping stories of growing up on rural Minnesota farms with large flocks of siblings, lots of work, plenty of food, and little else. Thrown in for good measure were a few deer hunting tales and a couple of new, very creative, very earthy sayings that can’t be repeated in a family setting.

I left the farm smiling, slightly poorer in money, much richer in firewood, and certainly not hungry. Firewood happens—this time it came with bacon and eggs.