“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
“To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator. “
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Substitute rock elm and hickory and I’m livin’ it.
The Shack has no furnace but the Upland 17, an old stove that I brought with me from our old house. We heated that cottage with that cast iron box, all 800 square feet of it, and it kept us warm many nights while our small family grew to a bigger one. Canoelover Jr.’s first word wasn’t mama or papa. It was hot. The helicopter parents who lived there before us had removed it and were sorta freaked out we were going to put it in. They were convinced our children were going to spontaneously combust.
My Amish friends don’t build gates around their wood stoves. Their children are expected to respect the stove, and my guess is that their kids, like Canoelover Jr., touched the stove once, got a blister on the index finger, cried a few tears, and never touched it again.
But (as usual) I digress.
Aldo is a hero of mine. He understood a half century ago that we were already distancing ourselves from the sources of our sustenance. Milk comes from a jug, not a cow; butter comes from a box, not a churn; meat arrives on little plastic trays with clear wrap, a little pad to absorb any blood that would be a reminder that it used to be a living, breathing animal.
And heat, of course, comes out of the magic box in the basement, fed through magic conduits to grates that breathe heat into our rooms. In fact, the little magic box on the wall tells the big magic box in the basement that it’s one degree too cold and the magic box does its thing.
I’m grateful for the magic box in the basement, but I do understand where heat comes from. Frankly I prefer a wood stove heat to the forced air, but I’m not in a position to cut, split and stack enough wood to heat our home, with work and all that stuff. For now, I’m content to heat The Shack with the some small fruits of my labors.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
Great post and quote. I’m afraid our culture, with its love of all things urban, has fallen prey to those two spiritual dangers. Remaining connected to the sources of our sustenance keeps life tangible in an increasingly abstract world. Thanks for writing it.
Hey Canoelover!
What a great post. Absolutely spot on. Thanks for sharing. Thanks to Tim for leading me here (again!)
True words. I hope that this sense of connectedness expands beyond people’s desire to ‘buy locally’ and subscribe to CSAs, which I think is a good step in that direction.
I’m with you on Leopold. He’s a hero of mine, too. His definitions of wilderness, sportmanship and more inform my views and come with me on every trip I take.
Truth and I agree wholeheartedly my family knows that heat comes from hard work as do groceries (sometimes out of the garden, hen house or root cellar and if particularly blessed the field or river in the form of meat). Another great post.