Kindling
            Oh it's really winter all right, and it's been cold. For a while it seemed like that might not happen at all this season, but it found us. You know it's cold when half your conversations in town start with the subject. You know from the squeak your boots make on the snow as it gets close to zero. And it's definitely a sign when the sand pile for the driveway‚s frozen so hard your shovel just bounces off it. But you really know it‚s cold when you go out to your woodpile and start pulling only the good stuff, the two and three year-old maple and oak and cherry packed with every last BTU the forest could squeeze into it. 
            Those of us who heat with wood all have our own intimate relationships with our stoves and woodpiles and even our kindling supply, along with all the tricks we‚ve taught ourselves to maximize the heat or minimize the work. We each have our own ways of choosing when to shovel the ash out or to build again on what‚s left of last night's embers. We all have our ways of raking the coals, and of loading for the fastest, hottest burn we can get and then closing it down to something controllable. We've learned how to reach without thinking for exactly the species and size that's needed at any given moment. And we've all figured out that every woodstove plays a bit like a musical instrument only vaguely like any we‚ve played before. My stove looks like something from Jules Verne's Nautilus, with an old style catalytic converter, three airflow controls, and two thermometers. Every time you walk over to it it's an exercise in thermodynamic problem solving. It's efficient, it cranks, but it doesn't kick out the heat my friend's oil barrel stove with a blower does.
            My editor thought we should probably be looking at either the state's budget ,or maybe the state of the union in this issue of the paper. Okay, well, the President's right you know: steroid use among professional athletes really is a problem. As for the state's budget, we talked about it last year but it didn't do much good. It does seem the Governor's gone a bit casino-happy, pinning his hopes for funding education on New Yorkers' willingness to play bad odds and tax the poor.  We're not suggesting it's easy to run or fund a state, but the job does come with some ethical obligations to the future.
            Meanwhile back in a less abstract world, I've been using hemlock for kindling this year but next year I'm going back to white pine. Dead dry they're equally combustible, but the hemlock rarely splits as well, and you can almost count on taking a splinter out of your hand for every round or two you bring in the house. I've also been using basswood for kindling this season, following the lead of a logger I trust. It burns fine, no creosote at all, but for plant matter that's light as balsa and looks as if it should split like a dream, it doesn't.      
            All right, you probably want to know where all the wood talk's going. The thing about heating with wood is you can't take it for granted. You can't flip a switch and everything's okay. You've got to be there, you've got to work it, and you've either got to deal with it very practically and very immediately, or you deal with the consequences in frozen pipes and stacks of dirty dishes. So heating with wood is sort of an object lesson in causality. You do one set of things attentively, you stay warm. You do anything else and everything falls apart. It‚s kind of like climbing, where in a vertical environment cause and effect are more apparent than in most places. Spend enough time just barely attached to walls of rock or ice and paying attention becomes a central part of who you are and how you deal with problems. And that‚s what it takes to make anything work well; a life, a family, a business, a town, anything.
            Our community, our region, and our country all have choices to make, and they all require an attentiveness on all of our parts that‚s not so dissimilar to heating with wood in January. Like most folks with woodstoves, I‚ve got a backup system. But the backup systems for communities and countries are slow to kick in. They're regulatory and electoral processes subject to all kinds of influence, and they need to be watched as carefully as any fire we tend. 
            This is a good time in our seasonal cycle to be doing that. It‚s reading season, for one thing. And it's a time for turning inward toward ourselves and those closest to us. It's the time for a change of pace most of us could use, a time to try and find a balance for ourselves between doing and being, between how we spend our time and how we invest it in self awareness. It's a tough time of year but it's not without its rewards. Next time it's 10 below, try walking outside and taking a long look at the night sky. See whether your eyes don't start tearing first from the cold, or from the beauty. If it's not so clear to you which, it could be you've become more a part of these mountains than you realized.