Fixed Up
[img_assist|nid=718|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=187|height=250]When I first moved to Vermont-more years ago than I like to think about-it was late October and the last of the leaves were grimly hanging on. The nights were cold and there would be a layer of frost on the ground when I woke up. You could feel winter coming. Having never experienced a New England winter I found the prospect exciting and full of romantic possibilities. I wanted a fire in the fireplace every night. A great big one with logs that burned with different colors of flame.
I got my wish since my husband didn’t know any more than I did about New England winters and the physics of fireplaces. We were both from the South and when we moved into our little rented house, we saw a fireplace in the living room and a big pile of firewood in the garage. The implications seemed obvious. We burned through all that firewood in no time.
Meanwhile, we were getting to know some real New Englanders and learning how to think practically about things like fireplaces and woodstoves. The former, I was told, was bad. The latter, good. Something to do with efficiency and frugality.
We were invited to one of our new friends’ home for dinner sometime just before Christmas and they told us, somewhat smugly, that they heated entirely with wood, which they burned in a stove designed to be ultra-efficient. I suppose it might have been but can’t say for sure since our host put every log into it like he was parting with a dear friend. I shivered all through dinner.
Eventually, we went along with the general mood and bought a woodstove. My husband spent hours sawing, splitting and stacking the wood we dutifully burned in the stove. I’ll admit that it heated the house wonderfully. Something about radiant heat. But there was absolutely nothing romantic about staring at this black steel box that now squatted in the fireplace.
The price of oil went down. We put a new, highly efficient furnace in the basement and I got my fireplace back. I knew enough now not to ask for a big roaring fire every single night. And, I actually got to have it both ways when we put a cute little woodstove into the bedroom. It has glass in the front so that you could watch the fire burn while you enjoyed the pleasure of radiant heat and how cool-or hot-is that?
But it is still the crackling fire in the living room fireplace that I look forward to on those cold January nights when the snow is falling heavily outside. I know, I know… most of the heat goes straight up the chimney. But everything comes with a price and if the cost of a fire in the fireplace is a little wasted heat…well, call me a grasshopper or a Carolina girl who still finds something romantic about a crackling fire in the fireplace on a cold, dark New England night. And sue me.
The romance of New England-our little corner of it, anyway, is something we celebrate tirelessly in this magazine. And there is always a lot to celebrate. In this issue we discuss birds and whether or not to feed them in the winter, the enduring contributions the Rudiakov family have made to the Manchester Music Festival, how shaped skis have forever changed the skiing experience and we celebrate the impressive life of Emo Henrich. That, and much, much more. Enjoy this issue, as well as our beautiful, crystalline Vermont winter that provides us with so many opportunities for big, roaring fires to snuggle before.