Cold Winter Mornings

I woke up to a very cold morning. I don't know the exact temperature but I look at two things, the needles on the big white pine by the kitchen and the frost on the old basement door. When condensation is frozen to the highest part of the panes, then it is at least 10 below zero. The needles on the pine squeeze closer together the colder it is and they are held together this morning like the ... well, (insert your favorite metaphor here). I wonder why someone would want to move here. Yet everything is glittery with ice crystals and life is somehow distilled in the winter to the essentials, dealing with water, staying warm, cutting wood, relaxing by the fire visiting with friends. Each day dawns with a list of things to do, some more critical, some less. The chair by the fire is alluring and writing an email instead of figuring out my new year's bank balance and starting a new quicken account wins out.

When I go out to the barn on these mornings, each animal emerges from its warm place. The cats come stretching, from a nook in the hay bales where they have made a warm nest; the pigs heave themselves out from the piles of hay and the horses just stand, oblivious of the cold in their warm coats and compact bodies. Fjord horses have extra short, thick ears that make me feel warm just looking at them. The chickens sit with all their feathers fluffed out like miniature feather beds, their toes tucked under, protected. They rise and shake out the warm air and get about the business of eating. Fresh water is welcomed and they each come up, ducking their heads and then rising the let the cold water run down their throats. The rooster makes a throaty clucking to alert the hens to the left over beans I have scattered on the floor.

I rise the same way, sliding out from under the cozy feather comforter. The area of warmth around the wood stove is smaller as the outside cold encroaches. The clothes on the floor of my little bedroom are cold but I am still warm from the bed and the cotton long johns feel refreshing. There is an order to do things to get the house up and going. Open the air control knob on the stove and watch the coals leap to life. As they glow, I head to the bathroom, stopping to run water in the bucket to fill the big kettle on the wood stove. Back I come, gathering up the bucket and adding to my hot water supply. I turned off my hot water heater a few weeks ago, wondering what that would be like. So far, not too bad. I carry water to the kitchen sink to do dishes. Putting my hands in cold water just doesn't cut it and grease is easier to dissolve with some heat. I use much less water this way and it is not hard. I don't shower a lot in the winter anyway and pouring water over my head covers me in large bursts of hot water that a shower doesn't offer. Clothes are OK washed in cold water.

Last year I used my electric baseboard heaters as supplement heat to the wood stove but not this year. For my own feeling of security, I want to know what its like to just have the wood. Not bad with just me here, but would someone else sharing my house think I was crazy? Am I crazy or is the rest of the consuming-world mad? 100 species go extinct each day. Polar bears, the poster children of Global Climate Change, are drowning. The little part of me that is desperate about this feels good about the wood stove heated water but am I crazy? I have a life that lends itself to this eccentricity. I have time in the winter, I don't have a job outside the house. I don't have to have clothes, hair and makeup a certain way to pass in the "outside world." A basic, simple life is good in theory, I am testing how it is for real.