Day 111

While on my 8,500 foot elevation thrift store shopping trip last week, I happened upon the most wonderful item.  It was so wonderful, I wasn’t even sure it was for sale.  So, I asked.   The clerk said, uh  yeah, they want $20 for it (which is apparently their go-to price for everything up there).

Oh, great, I crowed.  And then I must have chattered happily about it for a minute or two. I don’t really remember, but it seems like something I would do.

As he was ringing it up, a man with smiling eyes popped his head around the corner and said, “Oh, I was just wondering what you were talking about.”  Apparently, I sounded SO pleased, I was now drawing a crowd.

He looked down and said, “Oh,”

…long pause…

“it’s a log.”

Well, when he puts it like that…

So then everyone’s eyes were drawn downward. The clerk helpfully said, “well, it’s beetle kill, which is local”.  Some woman from another corner of the shop pipes in, “and it’s polished…,”  she sort of trailed off awkwardly.

Suddenly I felt like I had “$20 LOG” burned scarlet in my forehead.

So, I mustered up all of my dignity and hobbled out with my surprisingly heavy log.

By “beetle kill” the clerk was not referring to some slasher flick villain.   He meant the mountain pine beetle which is killing off many of the pines in Colorado and Wyoming.  In the past, the beetle has played a role in forest renewal by killing off the mature trees to make way for new growth.  But I guess too much of ANYTHING is never good, and the US Forest Service says the mountain pine beetle has infested over 3.5 million acres, which is unprecedented.   At first, it causes the landscape to have a rusty orange appearance.  After a couple of years they drop their needles and it just looks sort of spotty grey.  And then they eventually fall, sometimes on people.  There was a camper killed sleeping in his tent last month when a tree fell on him in Colorado, strange, but true.   And, the ghost trees provide lots of fuel for wildfires.   It’s a tough situation right now.

The wood of these tree corpses takes on this sort of blue and grey veined appearance.  Although slow to get started, beetle kill wood is now gaining traction as an eco-chic option for furniture, flooring  and building materials.  It should, large tracts of forest are getting ready to rot and if we create a commercial market for it, then it is more likely we will get the trees off the forest floor before there is a catastrophic fire.   I think it is pretty and right now, fairly cheap.      You can buy the wood from companies like Hester’s Lumber or have custom made furniture from places like Beetle Kill Blues. Even if you don’t live in the area,  there are still outlets across the US that can get it for you.

But, I wasn’t thinking of any of this when I placed my $20 LOG on the porch of the cabin.  At which point, I suddenly felt much better; because it looked like it belonged there.   And let’s be honest.  I have spent $20 in far worse ways, an overpriced glass of wine, a t-shirt made in a Chinese sweatshop, or a checked bag.

After all, one man’s overpriced log is another man’s cheap side table.

Mimosa not included in price