The last day of October, Halloween it is. Not that we have ever had a trick or treater. The driveway is too long and scary for everyone.
The last day of the regular deer season today. I was out last evening before dark and saw two small bucks close up but couldn’t grow them any bigger by looking at them hard. Well, still got this evening and then there is a four day late season around Thanksgiving.
The wood stove is running all day and night and will be for a long while now. Yea, and the new little stove is working out nicely just have to get used to it’s quirks, likes and dislikes. Every morning it is a special ritual that we go through to resurrect the flame. And the ritual is different than the one that I had with the last stove that we had for twenty years. Have to figure out the finer points of the new dance.
All this might seem a little primitive or quaint to some of my city friends but it seems to make sense out here. Some of us have to live out on the prairies or in bayous or on islands.
quaint and slightly crooked loves, Felipé.
Ok,this might seem a little far-fetched, but I miss the wood stove source for heat… the learning and knowing exactly how to start, stoke, bank and damp; how to get the warmth emerging again in the mornings; even the walk in the cold for more wood that brings that ‘uh-oh, more discomfort ahead in the wet and cold’ apprehension – which often turns out to be somehow a rewarding venture into the weather ( ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlige klær/ ‘no bad weather, only bad clothes’ as we say in Norway). The stuff of tending a woodstove fire is, to me, the stuff of tending to life in general: necessity, mindful preparation, intimate knowingness about how it works, and our well-considered input for its needs, occasional hard work and even discomfort as an expected and even embraced part of the yearly and daily cycle and process of ‘keeping the flame alive’. Maybe that’s too obscure or too much of a stretch as a helpful metaphor, but then again, it aligns with my experience of depending on that flame to keep warm – a daily, hands-on process of mindful, intentional ‘doing life’. I miss it. Thank you, Phil, for bringing it – the updates on all things wood stove– to our attention more than once. I seem to now see and discover ‘Internal Caminos’ everywhere.
Steve-O ~ I like the Norwegian saying, can totally relate. Is that why there are no umbrellas in the PNW? Yea, and the woodstove. I was thinking it a dance in the morning to get it going again for the new day. And it is a totally different dance than the one I had with the last stove that now sits forlornly out in the weeds.
I was in a house out here on Vashon that I describe as the most indoor feeling place I’d ever been in. It was all concrete and the heat was controlled by a fancy mechanism that was keeping track of the ebb and flow of the outdoor temp so as to anticipate the need for a change in heat inside. This is at the other end of the spectrum. Good for pianos maybe.
Anyway, hope to see you soon. Felipé.
Steve and Phil, keepers of the Flame,
All the while our four youngun’s were growing up, we depended on “downstairs” heat from a cast iron megalith that had been set on the hearth of a not-so-dependable-fireplace. It not only provided for warmth in our large downstairs, but was an inviting focal point for family to gather in the evenings. It provided a built-in chore schedule for the kids to bring in the wood, after their having to help with the cutting and splitting thereof. The door of the stove was decorated with a brass deer head, and the flames made its face change as they ebbed and flowed with intensity. The responsibility was theirs to help insure that our home was warm. When they came in from work or play in the intense cold of Iowa’s winters, they would lay side by side on the floor with their cold feet as close to the stove as they could tolerate. A “warm” memory for us, even now.
A great and well crafted comment, Steve, as always.
SF,
PFJ