It smells wonderful - rich, damp and complex. The patterns in the wood are beautiful - irregular yet coherent, a living thing. Hard to believe that something so tough is the product of a plant.
"Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men" - from "Rule. Brittania," not such a popular song these days, but something sung in school when I was small. That salutes oak as a valuable raw material to build the ships that did indeed rule the waves,centuries back.
When it's seasoned and dried, it will burn well in our log stove - another very different use of the heartwood as a raw material.
But there's something else to consider, other than its usefulness to Nelson's navy and our stove.
It's a time machine, like any grown thing; it carries its unique history in its structure. It has a story to tell us that we can't really read in any detail. Stifling summers, bitter frosts, raging storms, calm autumn mornings, all grown into its structure and recorded in its patterns and shapes.
When is such wood dead? It looks, in its heartwood, as it did when the tree stood tall, I'm sure. But it can grow no more, so I guess it is very slowly changing its state. No more feeding, no more growing, just a slow drying out, and then, if it had been without human intereference, a wetting, a slow rot, host to countless organisms.
But as it is now, a log to throw out some heat, and then ash.
So let's sniff at it again, pause and look at its beautiful roughness, acknowledge its hardness and strength (it's a bugger to split, I can tell you that.) Let its past stand up and be counted in its present state. No need to rush it into the stove; it's been centuries growing, and although its time-scale is very different from mine, for the last ten years its shared the same wind, sunshine and rain as me. Copmpanions, of a sort. A tutor to me, for sure.
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