Woodburning Stoves Quotes

No cabin is complete without a woodburning stove or fireplace, even if that cabin is in Death Valley. Gas

Winter is a quiet house in lamplight, a spin the garden to see bright stars on a clear night, the roar of the wood-burning stove, and the accompanying smell of charred wood. It is warming the teapot and making cups of bitter cocoa; it is stews magicked from bones with dumplings floating like clouds. It is reading quietly and passing away the afternoon twilight watching movies. It is thick socks and the bundle of a cardigan.

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction.

The school year started in September, with a long vacation in the winter, not the summer, due to the difficulty of keeping the schools warm in North Korea’s harsh winters. My kindergarten had a large wood-burning stove in the middle of the classroom and walls painted with colourful scenes of children performing gymnastics, children in uniform, and of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling a Yankee, a Japanese and a South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet.

This was the Connecticut Alex had dreamed of—farmhouses without farms, sturdy red-brick colonials with black doors and tidy white trim, a neighborhood full of wood-burning fireplaces, gently tended lawns, windows glowing golden in the night like passageways to a better life, kitchens where something good bubbled on the stove, breakfast tables scattered with crayons. No one drew their curtains; light and heat and good fortune spilled out into the dark as if these foolish people didn’t know what such bounty might attract, as if they’d left these shining doorways open for any hungry girl to walk through.

The one piece of nostalgia he has allowed himself is the gleaming cast-iron wood-burning stove in the center of the room, which replaced his mother’s that was stolen during the years the studio lay derelict.

Before the presents, Maximilian and his brother Reinhard would bathe together in the smoke kitchen in a wood tub held together by iron rings. Cursing when one of them had peed in the bathwater, they would lather themselves with a bar of turpentine soap with a stag stamped on its surface, dry their lean white bodies, the genitals still hairless, with a coarse towel beside the glowing red griddle of the wood-burning stove, and put on clean underwear, ironed shirts, and gray wool socks.

Winter is a quiet house in lamplight, a spin in the garden to see bright stars on a clear night, the roar of the wood-burning stove, and the accompanying smell of charred wood. It is warming the teapot and making cups of bitter cocoa; it is stews magicked from bones with dumplings floating like clouds. It is reading quietly and passing away the afternoon twilight watching movies. It is thick socks and the bundle of a cardigan.

The essence of things is not rationally knowable, and reality cannot be reduced to mechanistic frameworks. When realizing this, we can finally start to look for the essence of life where it truly can be found: in that which always escapes rationalization and mechanization, in that which dissapears from a conversation when you digitalize it, in the difference between the mother's womb and an artificial plastic womb, in the difference between the heat of an electric heater and that of a wood-burning stove, and so on.

Mother's Apron There's a great old skit called "Mother's Apron" that touts the many household uses of the apron. This basic skit, with its infinite individual variations, has been performed by women's church and community clubs for generations. Below is a version remembered by Bernice Esau that was presented by her mother, probably originally in Low German, the common language of the rural Minnesota community where it was performed, hence the slightly lilting, old-fashioned sound to it: Do you remember Mother's aprons? Always big they were, and their uses were many. Besides the foremost purpose, the protection of the dress beneath, it was a holder for removal of hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears and, yes, even for wiping small noses. From the henhouse it carried eggs, fuzzy chicks, ducklings, or goslings, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. Its folds provided an ideal hiding place for shy children, and when guests lingered on chilly days, the apron was wrapped about Mother's arms. Innumerable times it wiped a perspiring brow bent over a hot wood-burning stove. Corncobs and wood kindlings came to the kitchen stove in that ample garment, as did fresh peas and string beans from the garden. Often they were podded and stemmed in the lap the apron covered. Windfall apples were gathered in it, and wildflowers. Chairs were hastily dusted with its corners when unexpected company was sighted. Waving it aloft was as good as a dinner bell to call the men from the field. Big they were, and useful. Now I wonder, will any modern-day apron provoke such sweet and homesick memories?

The hour that was for them, for us, for all who had awakened one morning to see their fields covered with blood rather than harvest, who didn't seek to change the world but lived in good faith and prayer offered to an imposing God, for the young women who mended their men's clothing and held their sons' mouths to the purple nipples of sweet breasts, for the man who watched the suns descend behind the mountain every evening and dreamed and when his sons were grown, passed on his dreams, for the black nights when guitars harmonized with the wind's song, to the bottle of regional brew, and a hand-rolled cigarette, to the baptism and a dance of celebration, to the aroma of soups simmering on wood-burning stoves and filled the bellies of those who worked the fields, to a candle that burned in vigil while a hungry mind gulped the printed truth of another's legacy, to the owl that called from between the moon and earth while lovers enwrapped their passion on silver tinted grass, to the history of the world and to its future, to all that had lived and died and had been born again in that moment as i approached am opaque window and pointed my weapon.

Marcie looked at the ugly thing and took a minute to rearrange her mental picture of the family gathered around the wood-burning stove, replacing the quaint, charming piece in her imagination with this big, brown metal beast, which would heat their home but not burn little fingers. It would be like a large, beloved dog of some hideous mixed breed, that fit right into their family and served its purpose so well that no one noticed or cared what it looked like.

For a moment I imagine skipping through the waves like the playful portraits seen in a certain kind of holiday cottage. Later I’d eat fish and chips on the beach, wrapped up against the October chill blowing off the North Sea before lighting a fire in the wood-burning stove in my perfectly appointed house.

When the price of oil on the world market began to fall, the American business community and the public lost interest in the great energy crusade. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, removed the solar panels from the White House roof and scrapped the wood-burning stove in the living quarters. America went back to business as usual, buying even larger gasguzzling vehicles, and using ever greater volumes of energy to support a wasteful, consumer-driven lifestyle.

My kindergarten had a large wood-burning stove in the middle of the classroom and walls painted with colourful scenes of children performing gymnastics, children in uniform, and of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling a Yankee, a Japanese and a South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet.

I walked to the covered porch. Rafe was on the futon, still dressed, no blankets or pillow, sleeping with his head on his arm. It was chilly, with the cold night air seeming to blast through the window glass. I found a blanket folded by the wood-burning stove. I went back to Rafe, unfolded the blanket, and crawled in beside him. He woke as I was pulling the blanket up over us. “Maya?” I put my fingers to my lips and lay down. When I opened my mouth, he put his hand over it and waved at himself, reminding me that he was still wired. Then he leaned to my ear again, his voice so low I’d never have heard it without skin-walker hearing. “I have to sleep with my clothes on. But I know why you’re here. Daniel.” “I--” He covered my mouth again and whispered in my ear. “You need to tell him. I was hoping you wouldn’t…” He trailed off, but stayed by my ear, so I couldn’t see his expression. I knew what I’d see if I did, though. Disappointment. Hurt. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. He hugged me. A tight hug. Fierce. Then his lips went to my ear again. “Don’t be.” I tried to look away, but he caught my chin and kissed me and it was such a sweet kiss, and I felt so guilty, like I’d betrayed him, and my throat seized up and tears trickled down my cheeks, onto his.