Our neighbor said he will bring his chainsaw and come slice the giant, hurricane-fallen trees on our land to make rough boards. He’ll use them to frame up raised vegetable beds this spring.
That will be quite a job. The trees are fifty feet long, with a diameter of almost a yard. We’d get some firewood out of it, too, for next year, once it cures. This year’s need for logs to burn is almost over, and just in time, as our woodpile has shrunk to almost nothing.
Somehow it’s been an especially good year for fires. For immersion in movies in front of the hearth, for eating too many cookies, too much buttered popcorn, warmed by the flames. For knitting and purling on a cozy piece of work stretched across my lap, glancing up now and then at the flickering, crackling hardwood.
Every fire holds worlds within it.
We’ve stayed inside the Cabin a lot this winter, since it’s been cold, working, dreaming. Eating, as I said.
So many people who still have hearths have converted to gas, but it’s just not the same. Good article today in the Times about the cult of firewood in Norway. The subject is practical, historical, even mystical. People there have to stay warm, especially at the Sorrisnivia Igloo Hotel in Alta.
A Norwegian TV show probed the proper way to cut and stack lumber. After all the discussion, a fire burned onscreen all night long. Viewers found it as thrilling as Downton. Nearly a million people tuned in. Afterwards an expert, the author of a bestseller titled Solid Wood, opined, “One thing that really divides Norway is bark.”
Meaning, should it lie up or down on the pile? A heated argument, so to speak, could be made for either.
Jean Zimmerman 
Your knitting is looking good! Nice and even!