June 2023 - 47

onto hooks for a 6-year-old boy too hot with
enthusiasm to come in out of the soaking
snow.
Next in line behind mankind's mastery of
kindling for the wood stove. " I'll carry those
home with me, " I told my brother.
In his last years my dad was on a walker
after falling and breaking his hip in several
places, but the walker did not keep him
from his wood pile, for he was a mountain
boy to the very end. He outfitted his walker
with wheels and rolled it outside and down
a bumpy, flagstone path, inching his way to
a chair beside his chopping block. There he
sat with a hatchet for hours on end splitting
old lumber into kindling for a future fire.
He stacked the kindling into a banker's box,
and stored the box in the shed for a chilly
morning. Maybe even a June morning.
June fires, kindling fires, have a special
pop that takes back summer from winter, that
warms a hide tired of winter and dressed in
optimistic cotton clothing. Kindling fires thaw
fingers wet and cold from fishing mountain
streams swollen with snowmelt and rainwater,
fingers that have threaded earthworms
fire surely lies metallurgy. I have a particular
affection for cast iron. There's a certain smell
as a cast iron stove warms, its core clicking
and popping. It is a tempo slightly different
and somehow in tune to the crackling of
the little fire itself. Turn a butt to a cast iron
stove ticking to life on a wet, cold mountain
morning. Add a cup of coffee to the scene.
Heck, just for good measure throw a snoozing,
wet dog at the foot of it all. Take a deep
breath - iron warming, the faint odor of
smoke, coffee, even a strange pleasantness
in wet fur drying. Pictures have been painted
of such bliss.
A concert is playing. Out beyond the dripping
aspens the stream roars and swells, pushing
out of its banks, too murky for fly-fishing
but just right for worms, maybe even lures.
The wet snow - more rain than flake -
hisses down on young grass and the leaves of
the quakies dance and patter with Marimba
tones. On the cabin porch I clump to the
woodbox for a small armload of kindling,
then feed the popping flames.
The cardboard bankers' boxes have long
since been emptied of my dad's labor at his
chopping block, but I, my father's son, still
use and repurpose them. I fill them for a June
snowstorm that is likely to come. It will be
just a kindling fire to take the edge off, for
the sun will be out soon enough.
- Tom Reed is a lifelong man of the Mountain West
who lives on a small ranch with his wife raising fox-trotting
horses and semi-feral children. His latest work
can be found in the anthology " Mouthful of Feathers,
Upland in America, " Cornmill Press, 2023.
- Lori Eslick is an illustrator, artist, presenter, children's
picture book illustrator and workshop leader.
She regularly creates illustrations for Wyoming Wildlife
magazine's Wild Country Dispatch column. More of her
work can be seen at eslickart.com.
Wyoming Wildlife | 47
http://www.eslickart.com
June 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2023
