How many ways does wood heat warm, Let me count the ways

 

Fred and Faye guard our woodpile
CC Jean Stimmell

This essay is a continuation of last week’s piece questioning the value of new technology like Apple’s latest iPad. Yes, this cutting-edge technology makes life easier, but is it good for your body and soul? Depending on your sensibilities,  you may find the following either romantic or asinine. 

Sacasas, in his substack, “The Convivial Society,”^⁠1 introduced me to the philosopher Albert Borgmann, whom I consider a kindred soul. Back in 1987, he wrote, “that technology has served us well by conquering hunger and disease, but when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption.” To make his case, he points out the advantages of heating with a wood stove, something near and dear to my heart.

While technology may make life easier, it doesn’t make for a good life. And that’s the essence of what we, of the sixties generation, were searching for. We found the answer in books like the one written by Scott and Helen Nearing: “Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World.” This couple had abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash, searching for self-reliance, good health, and community.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the wood stove loomed large in the lives of all of us engaged in the back-to-the-land movement, whether we already lived in New Hampshire or migrated here from elsewhere. While we had no money, we had lots of energy and enthusiasm.

We loved our wood heat:  not only could you physically feel the toasty rays soaking into your body as they radiated out from the stove, but the kinetic energy created a mellow feeling of community among all the folks present. 

This kind of energy was not immediate: it took time and community to create, as Borgmann notes: Wood heat “was not instantaneous because in the morning a fire first had to be built in the stove or fireplace. And before it could be built, trees had to be felled, logs had to be sawed and split, the wood had to be hauled and stacked.”^⁠2 

That encapsulates the old Yankee saying: "Wood heats you up three times; when you drop the trees, when you cut it up, and when you burn it."

I know it is a stretch, but contrasting the experience of wood heat with modern central heating is, for me, similar to that infamous Apple ad crushing all the former instruments of creativity in favor of the new iPad Pro. 

Let me explain by again quoting Borgmann who stresses not only the physical involvement that wood heat requires but the social aspects.

“It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house its center It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks.”^⁠3

The newest Apple iPad may be the thinnest ever, but can it warm your body and soul like wood can?

xxx

¹ https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/why-an-easier-life-is-not-necessarily

² Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry by Albert Borgmann. University of Chicago Press: 1987

³ Ibid.