“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

She cooked on a woodstove and heated the place during the winter with a huge wood furnace that she manned like the captain of a submarine in a dark basement ocean during winter. – Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing In America

I love my wood stove. It’s one of the small reasons I decided to live out here where the roads thin out and the trees stand guard around my house. I put a log in the stove. A few hours later all that’s left is a small gray philosophy. Ash. Most of the log seems to have wandered off without saying goodbye. It didn’t disappear. It went on a trip. It turned into light and heat and energy. What a surprise for a piece of wood that thought it was just minding its own business.

It howls like a wolf or a lion who discovered physics as it lifts me from the dark and cold. Einstein says mass is energy that wears a heavy coat, scaled by an enormous number. When the wood burns, atoms change partners. The total weight of what’s left, ash, gases, and warmth, is just a hair less than what went in. A missing speck. Too small to weigh. Too real to deny.

That speck turns into warmth on my hands, light flickering on the wall, and hot air climbing the chimney like it’s late for something important. The stove is a gracious genie. It doesn’t explode. It clears its throat one crackle at a time. A wood stove is E = mc² whispered. A nuclear bomb is E = mc² screamed through a megaphone.

My stove releases sunlight saved up by a tree years ago like a miser who finally decided to be generous. A cremated log dances on the wall, warms my fingers, sends smoke up into the sky, and lets a tiny trace of itself escape into the universe to sail on forever as light.

Wood is mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, a complicated sentence made of simple letters. Burning rearranges it. Carbon dioxide and water vapor sneak off together. Smoke tells stories. The ash is minerals that won’t burn. They’re stubborn and refuse to go anywhere. Most of the wood becomes invisible. It rises, drifts, spreads out, and pretends it was never solid, but it can’t escape like light so it hangs around in the atmosphere.

The same thing happens when I eat my lunch. I’m a slow-burning stove with opinions. Digestion breaks bonds the way fire does, only more politely. Energy turns into warmth, movement, thoughts, and repairs. Every breath out carries away the antisocial parts that don’t want to stick around. Every warm body is leaking light. The wood stove and my lunch dance the same physics but with a different choreography.

Every warm room, every moving muscle, every flickering flame is proof that matter isn’t final. It’s borrowed energy, temporarily shaped, like a good metaphor. The universe is mostly empty space. If you took out all the empty space, everything would fit inside a jawbreaker and probably still feel just as lonely.

Sure, my wood stove puts carbon in the air. That’s true. Also true, it talks to me. Snap. Crackle. Pop. It calms my mind. It keeps me company. If you’ve ever sat in front of a good-talking fire and had it quietly rearrange your thoughts without interrupting then you know what I mean. It’s hard to believe it’s wrong to use a wood stove that’s such good company even if it has some bad habits.

People aren’t saints. They’re human. Resilience doesn’t always show up in spreadsheets. When the grid goes out, the stove stays. No trucks. No wires. No permission slips. A wood stove can be difficult, like anyone you love, but it works. If the wood comes from your own land, from deadfall, thinning, from what the forest is ready to let go, you can see your energy. Touch it. Manage it.

You can boil water, dry clothes, heat food, warm yourself, and feel less helpless all at once. Removing excess fuel helps the forest breathe. A little care now prevents a lot of problems later. Waste becomes warmth. Hazard becomes supper for the cold.

My wood stove makes a place. It lifts spirits. I only use it when it’s dark and cold, not all the time, not greedily.

It isn’t good. It isn’t evil. It just is. I am what I am.

Which, if I remember correctly,
is exactly what the burning bush said.