Went to my parents’ house for Christmas dinner, and they had the woodstove going.
The woodstove used to be ours. We moved this past summer to a house that had more space. It doesn’t have a woodstove at all, just an oil furnace. I’d been heating with wood for eight years, up to that point. I really loved heating with wood. It was a different lifestyle, one that felt more connected. The work involved in cutting down your own trees, splitting, stacking the logs – it’s all intensely physical and extremely satisfying, especially when the power goes out for three days and you can tell people hey, come on over, we have plenty of wood and heat.
But like I said, our new house has an oil furnace, so we gave the woodstove to my mom and dad, who’d just purchased an old 1800’s farmhouse up north. They put the woodstove to excellent use, and yesterday at Christmas dinner I sat in front of it as it blazed and blazed.
I didn’t think I’d miss the woodstove quite so much when we moved, but now I know I do. In moving into the New Year, I hope to continue seeking out connections, ones that offer their own heat and light, as well as the reassurance that comes from having stacked a season’s wood against the coming winter.
