MISQUAH — A pile of free lumber advertised this week as “assorted boards, mostly straight” and set at the end of a Birch Street driveway has, in the customary manner of free lumber in this town, become both a minor local event and a slow-moving negotiation between its owner and his own intentions.

The boards — a mix of dimensional lumber, a few sheets of plywood, and several pieces the owner described only as “good for something” — are the residue of a basement project completed, abandoned, or transformed into a different project, the owner being vague on which. They were set out free, he said, “because the alternative was looking at them,” with the standard and unspoken condition attached to all free lumber: that it be taken before the owner thinks of a use for it, which he inevitably will.

“That’s the danger with free boards,” observed a neighbor who has watched the pile with interest. “You put ‘em out free, and then about day three you walk past and think, you know, I could shim the shed with that, and just like that they’re not free anymore. The window’s open. It won’t stay open.” As of Thursday the pile had shrunk by perhaps a third, claimed by parties who understood the rules and acted accordingly.

The owner confirmed the remaining boards are still available, still mostly straight, and still free, but added, with the air of a man hearing himself change his mind in real time, that he had been “looking at that one nice piece of oak” and might “hang onto that one, actually.” The oak, neighbors noted, was thereby removed from circulation, exactly as the rules predict.