O
ur home is once again warmed by the living fire. Before, when we were barbarians, heat leaked insouciantly through the floor, like foul vapors, treating every room the same in its indifference. Every several minutes, a machine would noisily erupt from its sleep, expel its stale breath like a sleep-apnic, turn over and rest again. The bathroom was suffocatingly hot, the living room lukewarm. The heat diffused and dissipated, and could not be bothered.
But the living fire has returned. For human habitation, the woodstove is the only civilized way to heat a home. The woodstove is a thing of the hands -- it is present, seen and felt and manipulated. It responds to intention, and can be well-handled or poorly. It encourages the use of some rooms over others, and draws people together. Our sofa was a graveyard in the fetid breath of the oil furnace, and it has become fertile ground in the light of the woodstove. There is nothing pleasanter than passing hours reading with a wife on a sofa bathed in the heart-heat of the woodstove, as the house merrily pipes smoke through its chimney, to tie itself to the sky.