to build a fire when it’s coldest i stoke the fire in the night home from town after coffee or television with friends the only choices grampa has an outdoor wood furnace most days it needs to be filled twice. it warms water that runs in pipes underground to the basement. air is blown over hot pipes and distributed through dusty loud ductwork. my room is furthest from the furnace. the coldest room. there is a small cinderblock building twenty yards from the house situated so the door of the furnace opens inside the building. it was constructed to hold wood. that rarely happens. there’s always been a woodpile in the yard. the little shed is filled with empty beehives, supers piled high to the trusses, stored til they’re needed come summer. the furnace simplifies things. daily maintenance is minimal. dirt and smoke and ash are kept out of the house along with the hazard of fire. the second coldest night of the year the bottom door of the furnace got left open. everything in the firebox burnt up quick. the bottom door is for removing ashes. grampa shovels them into metal buckets. when the buckets are full he spreads ashes on the garden or the sidewalk if it’s slick to melt what can. it felt cold in the house. 14.7 degrees. night before was 5. i went out to check on the fire. when i opened the door there was one dim cinder agleam in a bed of ash at the back end of the furnace. i rooted around in the brooder house til i found three empty dogfood bags. paper for the burning. i pried small woodscraps and twigs from the frozen ground. no snow. just intense cold. with three strike-anywheres i set to warm the chill. i arranged paper and kindling bark and leaves as a foundation to rebuild the fire. i enjoyed the pop of a strike-anywhere match on a cinderblock and began the complicated process of coaxing flames from none. i lit the first bag. it took a couple matches. while i waited to see if the fire’d take i filled the wheelbarrow from the woodpile. outside i looked at the crisp moon, clear stars and crackling black branches. sky’s clean when it’s coldest moon makes flashlight obsolete. i think i got a little moonburn. i got something of a fire going with the application of the third saved-for-a-last-ditch-gamble-paper-dogfood-bag (large) and last strike-anywhere. entropy won out. i went in to wait for the new fire to keep my room from getting colder. it was barely fifty in the house when i went to the kitchen and looked out the window (one of my favorite pastimes) at the furnace thinking to assist the fire by willpower and lurid blue moonlight. around 5:30 i heard grampa rustling around. it was cold and we attacked the fire again. something was still amiss. grampa built a fire. i filled buckets in the kitchen sink carried them out and poured them into the top of the furnace like filling the boiler of a locomotive. the intense mistaken fire got so hot and burned so quick it cooked off most of the water in the furnace. it refills itself. or it’s supposed to. such drastic fluctuations are hard for it to keep up with. i don’t know how many armfuls of water i poured from the third rung of a broken wooden stepladder propped against the slick stainless steel exterior of the furnace. an interminably pouring bucket brigade of one. by late afternoon the water’d been refilled long enough to rise to the predetermined temperature required to transfer heat through its insulated subterranean path into the basement. the house warmed up. problems with the furnace come when it’s coldest.
why i am a nomad: