Wood Fires Ablazing

This morning as usual I am racing with the furnace to get the house toasty warm so the heat won't come on. You can learn wonderful life lessons while you become proficient at fire building. One is to be thankful for matches and starter bricks. We are all getting good at doing without the starter brick by chopping them into very small portions until finally the last few days using none a all.

Grandma, on Bob's side, who grew up with a wood burning stove in Newfoundland, would shake her head and say, "I don't know why I do this," but she'd regularly tear papers and cartons and boxes into small pieces before trashing them. Now we do the same, except we put them into a box by the wood burning stove. It was such an ingrained life skill with Grandma, conserving paper and cardboard for family warmth, and cooking, and clothes drying, and water boiling.

I recall my mother's father, Grandpa G., stoking the fire in his huge fireplace at 888. He was almost always seated there, peacefully tending it, when I'd dropped by on a winter's day. Now, mental pictures of him are teaching me patience, not to rush things with a fire.

The bellows are a temptation to me. I once watched Rob put glowing papers to blaze by vigorous fanning, but I do not have the strength to do it. That is a guy job. I should not try to copy guy jobs. And then, once the papers are flaming, my fanning too vigorously only puts the fire out, and leaves me with a disappointing, smokey pile of embers. Better to gently, gently puff at the paper blaze until the wood chips, splinters and sticks have caught. Then the fire can establish itself, and go on to the bigger logs.

Once all is ablaze, I can push the damper in halfway and go fetch some more cold logs from the garage to have warming up by the stove side. The fun thing is later returning to check the fire. My eyes always open eyes wide in wonder at the intense glow of those amazing, red, crispy chunks. Then I get to poke and arrange and add another log.