THE WAY OF DEAD WOOD

Rex Burress

The way of dead wood is to decay or petrify after having been a living thing. The way of dead wood is also a source of fuel, or carved into a thing of beauty by a sculptor. Or made into a house by carpenters.

When sculptor and artist Richard Harvey was living, he would pull gnarled pieces of driftwood out of Lake Oroville and make them into finely finished works of art. There is a lovely sample of Richard's woodwork in the Feather River Nature Center that he created from an oak burl found in the lake. Using nature's substances to make beautiful art pieces is the foundation of most craft projects. Richard also made ceramic art out of a fine gray clay from Table Mountain. He took Artists of River Town to the slurry pit one time to bucket some of the sand mine separated clay.

Driftwood is usually thought to be found along the ocean side, but storms tear at the mountains sending an avalanche of wood floating down into Lake Oroville, to the disdain of boaters. Burn piles on the shores are the yearly norm. Fresh water driftwood doesn't have the salt water wood borers that riddle the sea driftage.

Another way of wood is the humus debris left when decay pulverizes the tissues into a soil additive. I thought of this subject while sitting in my backyard and seeing many boards, stakes, and wooden garden aides that gardener Jo had used in her loved plant oasis. Time has a way of blending life and death into a homogenous whole. A bench was crumbling. Wooden pathway separators were perfectly rotten as insects, fungi, and decomposers rummaged through the dead wood. Even a step on the stairs to my studio had a spot of dry rot. Maintaining wood objects is an everlasting chore.

At Oakland Camp near Quincy, Paul Covel was the camps first naturalist in the 1970's, and he had a particular stump that he used on his nature hikes to demonstrate the process of decaying wood. Even though that stump had termites, various beetles, fungi, it was still there for me to use after Paul 30 years later. I wonder if it's still there or just a pile of ravaged duff?

All around my backyard are pieces of petrified wood I have found far and wide. When a tree falls and is quickly buried by volcanic ash or flood mud, decay is blocked and minerals present in the soil replaces the vulnerable wood cells to become stone-hard over millions of years. Hence there is colorful rocks for the rockhound to find.

It is fascinating to realize that the petrified trees in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona were once living trees that were covered thousands of feet deep in lava. Tree lover and park promoter John Muir discovered the agatized woods in 1906 when he took his ill daughter Helen to Arizona for her health. He urged President Theodore Roosevelt to make it a National Monument to protect the amazing site, which was declared in the following year. In spite of the protection, tons of the gem rock is smuggled out even today, and rangers have to check cars for thefts.

Hence I have hunted for specimens all over the west where it is legal. One episode occurred in the Black Rock Desert mountains. The rock club-six that I was with explored deep into a ravine as I skirted the canyon rim. On the very top-edge was a petrified log. I yelled to those at the bottom that I was rolling a log down, and indeed it went bounding dramatically down the mountainside, to land with a plop in a sandy wash. I have two pieces of it in my studio to remind me of that glorious day of discovery.

Evidence of ancient forests exist in much of the desert and America wherever it is revealed by erosion or the geologist's hammer. The information that is gleaned from the fossilization of plants and animals indicates what life was like a hundred million years ago. Without the solidification of mineralized dead wood and bodies, we would know nothing of the past.

“The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living. How beautiful is death!” --John Muir