The Moon Looks Down With Favor

My brother ended last night’s Instant Messenger session by saying that he spent the morning cutting wood. He has quite a bit piled up and not because he’s a pack rat. It’s because he has a furnace to feed and, during the winter, it gets hungry. Often. He has it stacked in his back yard, he has it stacked in his podnah’s back yard, he has it stacked in a barn somewhere.

I know the feeling; when I lived on a farm, we also had a wood furnace and when the weather turned cold, the furnace turned hungry. For us, the wood came from the tree surgeons who dumped their trimmings near one of our barns.

For my brother, his came from Bois de Lune. That’s not a town in Quebec; it’s “Moon Wood,” the kind of stuff you see during the day, never on your own property, and pick up quickly at night. The trees are dead, they’re leaning over or even flat on the ground, they need to be removed. So you cut and hide them, come back the next day and, with speed beyond description, stick them in your pickup.

High above you, the moon looks down with favor. You are clearing the woods of trees that would otherwise rot, trees that could fall over on people passing by, trees that have outlived their usefulness. And any other excuse you can come up with to get that stuff into your furnace.

It’s been said that Bois de Lune has a higher heat value and produces a more satisfactory glow.