Winter Woods

One of several snow-draped maples in our easement, between sidewalk and street.

It all started with a heavy snowfall. It was early January and winter had finally arrived in the Bitterroot. Moisture in six-to-eight inches of very wet snow was welcome, since snow in the mountains often adds the ground moisture that helps keep wildfires down later in the year. So far, the snowpack up high is a bit disappointing. But down low -- 3,600 feet or so -- it's made for some gorgeous walks around town.

Alex strolls ahead, providing the one slash of color in an otherwise black-and-white world.

Another delicate white-on-black reach of branches..

...And yet, more of the beautiful white stuff.

My fingertips get cold, even in my Missouri-made sheep's wool mittens (fingerless, so that I can use the camera).

The warmth that comes from wood, as you might have guessed, is on our minds as we walk from chilly maple to frosty fir to powdered ponderosa pine.

This is some especially wet firewood that we got from a friend. We use it sparingly, hoping it will be dry next year.

A week or so before the storm, we harvest even more wood -- two long-dead trees, killed by beetles emboldened throughout the West by warmer weather of recent years. Eric Milner fells these trees on his property. Alex and he cut them into rounds that I load into the back of Eric's car.

Two chainsaws, at work -- Alex's, at left; Eric's, at right.

Unloading the rounds is as easy as tossing them onto ground between two sheds. They'll be split and stacked for this year, or next. (Tigre, center left, helps out.)

Back to the natural order of things: Wood in its original form. Nine small birch trees greet us on an especially cold walk along Blodgett Camp Road. With sun spotlighting the massive granite face of Blodgett mountain in the background, these Montana sources of wood look delicate, indeed.