By Tim King
Special to the Leader
Over the past three years that we’ve been living in this house, I’ve been intrigued, intimidated and eventually inspired by our wood stove.
Although I never lived in a house with one, I don’t think I could live without one now. When we first looked at the house, I remember being curiously excited about having a wood stove in the living room. After all, we were moving to Maine and if I wanted to fit in, I figured that I had to learn how to be a woodsman of some kind – here was my chance.
Generations of Maine men and boys (and more than a few girls) grew up cutting down trees, hauling them someplace to be milled or split, and using them for fuel or building. Closer to home, my wife has memories of running a wood splitter as a kid. She would sit on a little seat that her dad rigged to the side of the machine and push the hydraulic lever back and forth while the men loaded great slabs of wood to be split.
When we first met, I was introduced to the term “doing wood.” At first, I’ll admit that the term sounded a little strange, but after the last few years of supplying our woodstove with several cords of ash, cedar and oak, I think the term is right on the mark. Heating your home with wood can be a year-long process with many steps, and there are no short cuts, you just have to do it.
The process of selecting, cutting, splitting and stacking wood is still a labor-intensive process. While there are delivery services today that will bring cut and split cordwood right to your home, you still need to expel energy getting the pile put away and protected from the elements. And some would say that’s the most rewarding part.
More than 150 years ago, Thoreau wrote in House Warming, “Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection,” and I find this to be as true today as it was then. I’ve been in blue-collar living rooms and shirt and tie boardrooms where men have complemented and ridiculed each other about the condition of their woodpiles.
Clearly, there is an art to taking hundreds of different pieces of odd shaped wood and turning them into a single, sturdy, self-standing structure. The woodpile is the everyman’s sculpture – but sculpture that is constantly changing. As pieces are taken off and used in the stove, the pile tells of the cold winter we’ve successfully endured and the smaller it gets, the closer to spring we are. It has always been this way.
Again, Thoreau’s words, “It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold,” are just as appropriate today as they were in the mid 1800s when they were first written. However, I believe the “value” that Henry refers to is both monetary and emotional.
While there is no doubt of the value of wood in terms of its ability to turn itself into anything from fine furniture to toilet paper, wood is equally valuable to a person’s soul.
In most homes, oil, gas and electric heat happens at the flip of a switch from sources most never see or think about. Oil is delivered to our homes, often when we are away at work, and stored in huge metal tanks in a hidden corner of the basement. The bulbous, black tank always looks exactly the same, as do the baseboards that invisibly deliver heat to the house. Likewise this is also the case for gas, which either sits in a tank in the yard or is delivered as needed from some unseen source deep underground.
By contrast, we know exactly where wood heat comes from. We can see it at work, and we are completely responsible for it. From cradle to grave, we are the ones that control if and when there is heat.
We are responsible for purchasing wood or harvesting it ourselves. We are responsible for stacking and covering it from the elements so that it remains dry. We are responsible for bringing it into the house, collecting kindling and maintaining a supply of fatwood fire starter sticks. There is a process. If you are cold, there are steps you must take before you will be warm again.
Our stove has become an active member of the family these last few years. The relationship has gone pretty well so far. By keeping it clean, healthy and fed, our stove has become much more than a source of heat and conversation. It’s also provided a measure of internal peace and serenity through its flickering flames and crackling logs.
Warmth, light and sound – the original multimedia experience.
In this modern world of instant messaging, instant digital pictures and instant news, I like being able to show my kids something that requires more than a push of a button to operate. Sure, it can be messy dragging log after log through the kitchen, but that chore seems pretty insignificant when we tally up our oil bill at the end of the year.
I’m sure that one day we’ll update our old stove to one that burns a little more efficiently, but for now I couldn’t ask for anything more. As the old New England saying goes, there is nothing quite like wood heat for a return on your investment – it warms you twice – once when you split it and again when it is on the fire, so that no fuel gives out more heat.
I’m all for investigating the potential of solar, wind or tidal power as potential sources for cleaner energy, but I can’t imagine anything that cleanses the body, mind and soul like a roaring fire on a cold, dark winter’s night.

Tim King is a freelance writer who sees the forest and the trees from his home in Scarborough. He can be reached at - sylvan.sauntering@gmail.com