One of the best places to be when it is cold out and there is snow on the ground is near a burn pile. When my Uncle Stuart first talked about getting some of the thinning burnt this winter, I hoped I’d be around to help. And when he drove by this morning and said he’d be starting to work on some of the piles, I got bundled up and headed over to the piles.
My uncle already had five of them lit, but barely, and there was an extra pitch fork in the back of the truck. For the next four hours or so, we monitored the burning, started a few more fires, consolidated the piles, and stirred up what was there to make sure everything would burn. The idea is to get everything burnt the first time around, and not have the fire die out before all the fuel has been consumed. While the fire is hot, the pile is left to itself, but when it gets smaller and the fuel has been significantly reduced, it becomes a duck-in-duck-out game, trying to toss smouldering pieces of wood further into the pile without getting your eyelashes singed off. Even when there are no flames, the heat is sometimes unbearable up close. I could never get as close as my uncle could get.
We lost a few trees in the rain and high winds early this summer, which contributed to the piles, and we saved the 50-foot-tall trunks, to be kept for firewood. Most of what made up the piles was from clearing and land management. Overgrown forests are unhealthy forests, discourage diversity of flora and fauna, are a prime habitat for the pine beetles which wreck havoc on forested land, and are high-risk areas for forest fires. Responsible land management includes clearing out old and unhealthy trees, and thinning areas of too-thick new growth. When people begin to inhabit a region, there is an obligation to care for the land, but this goes beyond aesthetics, and goes far beyond the hands-off approach of some environmentalists. Before people inhabited the Black Hills, wildfires would periodically reset the landscape, eliminating old growth and restarting with new, healthy growth. If you look at comparison pictures from Custer’s expedition to now, it is quite obvious that the forest has spread since then. Now we keep wildfires from taking out entire areas of trees, to the best of our ability, but if we’re going to put out wildfires, then we also need to do the job of the wildfire, and that is to clear out undergrowth and old, unhealthy tree growth.
This management also helps to prevent the massive destruction we’ve seen in the Hills because of the pine beetle. Probably due in large part to my Grandpa’s and my uncle’s careful management of the home place, we haven’t had any issues with the pine beetle, which has decimated other areas of the Black Hills. Pretty soon, though, the beetle will run its course and the forest will begin to replace itself. Either people need to responsibly clear and thin the forest to promote a healthy ecosystem, or God’s Creation will do the job itself! Rather fascinating, actually.
Sunny, my uncle’s faith Labrador, tagged along with us, chasing rabbits and eating cow manure. She makes me miss Baby, my other sister’s dog, who is now back in Illinois.
With the nippy wind blowing and the snow freezing underfoot, the heat from the fires felt wonderful. We monitored seven piles, two of which were good sized, but north of us along the highway, some independent contractors were burning about fifty small slash piles on our place, which were a part of a fuel-reduction program. In that area, which is now more open though still heavy forested, the grass is thick and lush in the summer, and there’s a little hollow where deer are frequently seen. It will be great having the burn piles out of there! They’ve been sitting there for several years now, and just weren’t very attractive.
When I finally came in for lunch, smelling strongly of smoke and the outdoors, it was almost 3:00. The day had flown by. The lingering smell of smoke still hangs in our little valley. It is a comforting smell. It is the smell of warmth in the wintertime.
It was cold in the cabin yesterday. So I curled up in the chair and burrowed under a blanket, one of the best ways to get warm. Anna took that opportunity to set Kashka on top of me. The little black cat promptly curled herself up and got comfortable. We stayed that way for awhile and when I finally decided to come up for air, she didn’t feel like moving. So I read and she slept for probably forty-five minutes. And she slept hard. Periodically, she would start twitching all over, obviously chasing mice in her dreams. Cute cat.
Every day, winter moves a day closer and Christmas is right around the corner. Traditions and family habits mingle with new ways of doing things, in our new home in the Hills. The smell of cookies baking recalls last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the festive bustle of preparation adds a spice to otherwise ordinary activities. The hymns are sung in church with perhaps a little more gusto than during the rest of the year. “Joy to the World” rings loud in the sanctuary. We have such cause to celebrate! What a beautiful time of year.
One tradition, though, almost got sidelined this Christmas because of space constraints, but the girls and I raised a cry of opposition – We live in a tiny house, but when it was suggested that we wouldn’t decorate a tree this year…Well, we didn’t hesitate to voice our opinion. So Saturday morning, Dad and I hopped in the truck and went out to cut us down a Christmas tree. It was a chilly, cloudy, breezy December morning, but the trees don’t mind. We were looking for a small tree, one that would sit on top of a table by our window, so it couldn’t be any more than three or four feet tall. We went out to a stand of trees near the highway, and started hunting.
We cut down about ten trees, I think, trying to find one that would work. If an “environmentalist” had seen us, they probably would have burst an artery. But we called it “thinning.” These little stands of trees reseed and become overgrown in a matter of years, and responsible land maintenance would include thinning them or clearing parts of them completely in the next few years. Some environmentalist efforts in the Black Hills have included leaving the forest entirely alone until it is so overgrown that even animals don’t want to live there (the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, for instance). So anyway, we chopped down a passel. There are literally millions of trees on the home place. There isn’t a shortage. There is an over-supply.
While Dad and I were looking for the perfect tree, Remington and Dove were nearby. The cold seemed to have gotten into Remington’s blood and made him frisky. He kept coming up close, then galloping off, bucking and kicking and racing circles through the open meadow. Little Dove kept to herself, but watched us. I don’t think the cold worked in her veins the same way it worked in Remington’s.
That evening, we opened boxes of ornaments, like opening boxes of memories – Each one has some sort of memory tied to it. Whether it was a gift from a special friend, or whether it was Mom and Dad’s first Christmas ornament (they got married two days after Christmas, in 1989), or whether it was handmade at a girls’ craft evening, or whether we simply remember laughing at how funny certain ornaments look, each of the ornaments has a memory tied to it. We packed as many strands of Christmas lights on our little tree, as many as we could, and hung as many of the special ornaments as would fit. We made every twig earn its keep.
Our Creche is my favorite of our Christmas decorations. When I was little, Dad started buying the pieces of the Creche for Mom, and gave them as Christmas gifts over several years. I loved it as a child, and I love it still – The pieces each look like a watercolor portrait, and the wistful, worshipful expression on Mary’s face is such a beautiful interpretation of the Virgin Mother.
Christmastime is possibly my favorite time of year. It is a time to celebrate, to remember, to rejoice, to mourn, to sing and make music to God, to fellowship – Although the cultural view leaves Christ out of Christmas, many still don’t. And, if I may say so, those of us who don’t leave Christ out of Christmas have so much more cause to be joyful, to celebrate, to make merry, than those to whom Christmas is simply a time to spend money and receive presents. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the gift-giving, the tree, the lights, the other traditions. But without Christ as the reason for the celebrating, Christmas would be a dead holiday. But it isn’t a dead holiday. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the coming of a living Messiah, who came to fulfill the promises in the Old Testament, the promise of a Person who will one day defeat and destroy Satan, the promise of a Blessing which all families of earth can enjoy, the promise of a Davidic King, a King who is reigning now and will reign forever and judge righteously, the promise of a Prince of Peace who will one day return. What a cause to celebrate!
Song Dog Journal 