The truckload of firewood that we bought in October won't last through this arctic winter. November's blizzard left the pine logs locked in ice, and we have to use an axe to knock them free from the frozen snow. We leave the damp logs in the sunroom to dry out so that they'll burn efficiently. Warming in the sun, they fill the room with the fragrance of evergreen. Meanwhile, we're waiting for our second load of firewood to arrive. Last year our fall delivery lasted well into March or April.
I know the cold won't last forever, but there's a feeling of profound stasis about it, as if time itself were stuck at sub-zero. Late at night, when I come home from work, the house feels like a tiny box suspended in a frozen black ocean. Its only sources of warmth are the leftover heat from the day's sunlight and the little wood stove. For the first time since we moved here in 2009, our jokes about death by hypothermia have a note of reality. On the coldest of these frigid nights, I long to fall into a bed warmed by central heating, with the musical click-roar of a furnace soothing me to sleep. I want to forget my fears about the pipes freezing, the electricity failing, the firewood running out.
But there never seems to be enough space in centrally heated rooms. The mechanically generated heat feels dry, claustrophobic. It smells of dust--or worse, of nothing at all.
Sunlight and pine sap --
on a January morning
I lay the night's fire
I lay the night's fire
