I went out to the woodpile today, after ignoring the fire too long, thinking the burnt coals would reignite if I stoked them. But they only rippled for a moment before fading to gray. The weather has turned cold. The Northwood’s leaves have fallen, they’ve covered the ground in sheets. The trick is to dress in layers, the locals say.
Inside the shed is: a lantern that kills mosquitos with electric charges, flashes blue with their deaths; an umbrella left in the roof beams by the last owner, who lives across the lake in a house of logs lacquered so through the windows you can see them gleam; spiders and the eggs they leave between the bark.
And the wood, of course, delivered a year ago in a truck that rose inches when the pallets were lifted from the back with a forklift. It feels significant to return with the wood, to drop the logs in the brass tub, and brush the spiders from my sweater. It feels like I’ve done something meaningful.
But I haven’t. How much you need to do before you’ve done something worthwhile, I never know, but this isn’t it. I kneel below the mantle, crumple pages of coupons and obits in the grate’s center with a handful of kindling, and swipe a match. The ink sparks as the name of a woman is singed and a sale for long grain wild rice flares. I take a log, place it in the tight space, and think about how the right way to do this must be different from what I’ve done
as it burns.
Danielle Harms writes from Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Her writing has appeared in New South, Cleaver Magazine, The New York Times, and on her blog Danielle.HarmsBoone.org
Alight is a post from: Straylight Literary Magazine