An Ode to Wood Smoke

(Note: Most of this was written in early December, 2005. I was interrupted.)

The first sound I heard this morning was the crackling of the fire in the wood stove. This is one of the advantages of getting up later than your spouse in a house that relies on a wood stove for heat--the first one up stokes the stove. The lazy ass soaks in the warmth.

As I slowly came to life, I thought of the odd little dream I had had at some point during the night. I was driving my old Toyota truck through a small cemetery. The caretaker had cut several problem trees down and to get around the pieces I had to stop and load some into the truck. So I did. And I lusted for more. The tree trunks and limbs were cut into perfect sized chunks and many were remarkably, freakishly round and I thought "those would be perfect to cut on a lathe. I need to get those for Kevin." Odd.

But as I pondered, the dream became less odd because, oddly enough, I am always eyeballing fallen trees and wood piles and the strips of trees between fields, wishing that I had a pick-up truck and a chainsaw so I could load it up and take it home. (I have both of these things, but I drive the sedan, don't you know.) I really get this urge when I drive through towns that have recently trimmed trees to make way for power lines. The forelorn piles sit beneath these star-crossed maples, oaks, and beeches, waiting for some city truck with loud equipment to come and pulverize it into mulch--and that's in the progressive towns. Most of the houses sitting behind these piles have no wood stoves and, so, won't use the wood.

Deep in the forests, Ents fume.

Why do the Ents not fume for me? Because contrary to the image of a woodswoman going out and chopping down a tree to cut into firewood, I've never cut down a live tree to get firewood. When I lived in my cabin, every last piece of wood I burned came from trees that had already fallen, courtesy of a local beaver with substandard planning skills or one hell of a snowstorm (see first picture) or maybe a fungus of some sort. That's one of the beautiful things about heating with wood--there is enough laying on the ground, or cut up in the name of progress, to go around quite nicely. The only fuel that need be involved is that used in a chainsaw, in a logsplitter (if you eschew the Zen hand-splitting), and in the truck to haul it home.

By the way, the pictures were taken during my time in the cabin. Remember that big ice storm/blizzard in 1993? Out in my neck of the woods, SIXTY trees fell over the 1.5 miles of road I had to drive to get to the first paved road. Because we were the only residents on our driveway-like road, the crews, um, took a while to get there. Like, a week. If it hadn't been for diligent hand-splitting (see picture #2) and my little stove (lovingly drawn but embarrassingly misspelled in picture #3), well, I shiver to think about it. In blizzards (again, see first picture), when power gets knocked out and people start to die of the cold (or of carbon monoxide poisoning from trying to heat with gas cooking stoves), people with wood stoves and dry wood live. Comfortably.

But what about start-up costs? Many wood stoves are really cheap. Kevin and I got our big, solid, used, cast iron monster for about $300. A lot of people will give them to you if "you haul". That's how we got the monster in our workshop. Really high end, efficient, and pretty stoves can cost a lot more. Stove pipe and supplies set us back another $50. We got two cords of firewood for $150. We'll need at least another cord, maybe two, which may mean another $200. Keep in mind that some folks spend hundreds each month. Of course, we could go to the woods and get it for free, but firewood needs to dry. If we're smart, we'll start early next year and put up our own cords for the cost of some premium gas and a few weekends of pleasant, sweat-inducing work in the woods. All-in-all, it's a really cheap way to heat a house, and--as I've said a million times--it's WARM. I grew up in a small house with lots of creaks and cracks and the thinnest-paned windows in the world. My bedroom was in the northeast corner. Ice would form on the inside of my windows, melting down into the slowly rotting (read: leaking) sills. It was chilly.

Perhaps those are the experiences that led to my obsession with enveloping heat and R-values, and my love of small, open, wood stove-friendly homes. When I think of my dream home, I first think of energy efficiency, of radiant floor heat and tight wood stoves and a plentiful supply of oak, hickory, sugar maple, yellow birch, and apple wood. A cord of any of these woods, densely packed with stored solar energy, replaces about 250-300 gallons of fuel oil. Why is nature so good to us?

Lastly, a dormant wood stove makes a hell of an imaginary Balrog for a five-year old "elf" wielding suction-tipped arrows.