On most balmy evenings before dinner, I offer wood sacrifices to the smoke gods in my now-falling-apart fire pit, an outside fireplace. Bourbon helps since my fire pit has a mind of its own. Sometimes the rusted incinerator will engulf my wood chunks in hot, blue flames while other times it spits billowing mouthfuls of smoke in my direction – no matter where I sit.
It helps greatly, though, that the wood I am now using came from a huge fallen maple tree branch that has aged an entire year. It actually burns. The problem I have is that the logs are in fairly large size pieces – 7 or 8 inches wide and nearly two feet in length. They are too big for my enclosed fire pit
I have an axe, with which I have occasionally split oak logs, but maple wood logs do not like to be split. While a dense oak log goes “ping” when it’s struck and separates instantly, a maple log goes “thuck” and the blade of the axe finds itself semi-permanently imbedded about two inches deep in the top of the log. Calling upon all the four-letter words I can recite, it is only with great difficulty that I can remove the axe blade from the unyielding log. It’s like Excalibur set in stone.
Yesterday I had an epiphany. While staring down my uncooperative wood pile, it occurred to me that the logs didn’t have to go into the firepit sideways, which takes up the entire interior. What if I stacked one on its end? That fits, and then I could burn a few smaller logs beside the giant log which would sooner or later catch fire and burn down nicely?
I tried it and it works like a charm! Those 25 or so huge logs in my wood pile have now met their match. They’re toast!
Like I said, bourbon helps.