Out of the box
The wood makes it good
When August arrives, it ushers in a fleet of loaded pickup trucks. You notice them everywhere, their beds stacked with firewood, sometimes with a chainsaw on top, its blade jammed between the rows, reminiscent of an old-style police light. It’s the time of year when people get serious about acquiring wood, similar to how folks get focussed on finding skookum cardboard boxes when they’re about to move. Winter approaches, not far off, poised up on the mountains at a respectful but still threatening distance. Time to lay in supplies.
There’s recently been a fledgling movement afoot in the BC Northwest against the use of wood-burning stoves. Pollution, allergies and deforestation are cited as fine reasons to invest in a cleaner-burning, more environmentally friendly method of heating one’s home. I respond to that with a line from the movie Platoon: “Shoot, you gotta be rich to think like that in the first place.” To the Northerner with a limited income, and especially one living in a poorly insulated domicile like, say, any trailer from the 60s or 70s, wood is often the only financially viable option. Have you ever seen a February hydro or heating-oil bill accrued by someone living in a Statesman, Ambassador or any other ironically named crap-trailer? It’s enough to elicit a string of expletives from a bishop.
And besides, name me any other method of heating, solar included, that doesn’t involve—at least somewhere along the line—the burning of fossil fuels or the production of waste during its manufacture.
Living in a northern rural community must have some advantages, or we’d all be crammed into big burgs elsewhere. Surely, one such advantage is the prospect of living off the land, even if it’s in a small, simple way like wandering down the road to pick huckleberries. Heating with firewood is a very vital way in which to take advantage of this favourable circumstance. I work—be it by sawing, chopping, or even lighting the blaze itself—and I get something life-sustaining from that labour. I believe that this is the essence of an independent, self-sufficient rural lifestyle. For those who want to “live off the grid,” or just live beholden to as few commercial interests as possible, the wood stove is crucial. In the cities, this self-reliance is not even an option. You just try not to weep upon reading the electric bill.
Less important reasons for the appreciation of wood heat are aesthetic ones. There is no more powerful, bone-thawing heat than that thrown by some cured pine. The characteristic of having heat emanating from a central point admittedly does have its drawbacks; for instance, the bedroom farthest from the stove should be given the thickest blankets to ensure its resident successfully awakens each morning. But the nostalgia-tripping sight of mittens and boots spread around a cast-iron woodstove or the instant relief from the effects of a 25-below stroll mitigate the frigid-corners phenomenon. And when you are outside, the sweet smell of pine or birch smoke takes a bit of the sting out of winter, just like using wood heat lessens the monetary blow of our elongated season. After all, 18 hours of darkness a day will raise your electric bill regardless of whether you have a wood stove or not. Not to mention Christmas…
We had a swell early spring this year, but our summer proved at times to be noticeably chillier than 2009’s—a summer that made more than a few people research air conditioning. It was heartening to know that I could make my current trailer (the thirteenth of my lifetime) toasty in a relatively short time with relatively little industry. And I doubt that a campaign by well-meaning, concerned folks will change this reassuring “empowerment” for their neighbours.
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