Out of the Fire

This week for 52 Projects I've ventured into new territory, dabbling in some natural material art. Wood, to be exact. Last fall Jane and I went in with her parents on a cord of wood. We have a fireplace in our house and we love fires. I had never bought a cord of wood before so I didn't know that it's a lot of wood. We stacked a bunch of it for her folks and loaded up her Santa Fe with as much as we could manage. We've had lots of fires this winter and we still have more to burn. And there's still some sitting in her parents driveway. We'll get it out of there eventually.

So, how did I get from there to here? A particular piece of wood caught my eye as we were stacking it on our porch. It was a log with a sort of hole in it. The hole was round and was probably from a branch that grew out of the tree at some point. I remember thinking how cool it was and that I should do "something" with it. I had no idea what, but I was drawn to it. Skip ahead to cold, snowy, winter night. A fire is going and needs more wood. I grab this particular log and figure, what the hell. Might as well burn it since I'm not really going to follow through with doing "something". In it goes, and begins to burn. In a few minutes I have a surge of regret. I beat myself up for putting it in the fire, for not following through with things, for not listening to that voice within; again. So I pull it out of the fire and it's charred pretty good but still intact. I take it outside and cover it in snow. I figured it would put of the flames and maybe have some magical effect on the wood. What the hell do I know. Well it snowed more this winter than we've ever had and the wood got buried and almost forgotten. Almost.

Once the snow started to melt I dug out my little charred friend and set him out to dry. By then Jane had already begun 52 Projects and that was exactly the push I needed. Now I had a reason to actually do that "something". This was to be the week. I cleaned all the loose bits off, sanded it down, and washed it. Then I set it out to dry in the sun; the beautiful sun we've been having for the last several days. I knew I wanted to mount it vertically somehow, maybe on a wood base like a trophy. Jane needed to go to Michaels and suggested I might find something there. I was going to just go to a trophy shop and get a base but my beautiful bride was right; I found just the right thing at Michaels. A bit of drilling, some Sedona Red 222, and a squirt or two (or six) of polyurethane later and I give you...


derivation