Cold cure
Woohooo it's minus 20 something!
It's a long while from the time that I experienced weather like that. This winter has been graceful in minimising its freezing impact until now. But, here it comes - not only pinching your cheeks to give them a nice blush, but also biting your ears and watering your eyes!
The snow glitters in the sun, creaking as you walk around wrapped in multiple layers of clothes.
To manage the cold inside our house, we use the ancient way. Every day there is a real true oven to heat. I go to the shed and carry some pieces of wood inside, place some paper and the wood into the oven (involves some strategising), light a match and then the paper and there it goes (provided that the strategy is working).
Weird it is. I had forgotten how the real fire looked and felt like - not a common experience for those city dudes, those coming from Shanghai or Singapore. It is warm, really warming. From top to bottom, through your skin, and perhaps a frozen heart.
It's not just the poetic stuff, however. The work one needs to put in running such an oven-based household in winter starts already during the summer time. The wood needs to be ordered and received (imagine the load of it you will need), chopped to the right size, organised into stacks for it to dry, after some time to be carried into an indoor place and organised to new stacks to keep it in the right shape for the cold times.. It's only from there that you can bring the firewood for your oven.
I think it's a personal relationship that will develop between you and your wood for warmth - the type that balances on love-hate borders.
And finally, a well deserved and heartfelt cure indeed..
It's a long while from the time that I experienced weather like that. This winter has been graceful in minimising its freezing impact until now. But, here it comes - not only pinching your cheeks to give them a nice blush, but also biting your ears and watering your eyes!
The snow glitters in the sun, creaking as you walk around wrapped in multiple layers of clothes.
To manage the cold inside our house, we use the ancient way. Every day there is a real true oven to heat. I go to the shed and carry some pieces of wood inside, place some paper and the wood into the oven (involves some strategising), light a match and then the paper and there it goes (provided that the strategy is working).
Weird it is. I had forgotten how the real fire looked and felt like - not a common experience for those city dudes, those coming from Shanghai or Singapore. It is warm, really warming. From top to bottom, through your skin, and perhaps a frozen heart.
It's not just the poetic stuff, however. The work one needs to put in running such an oven-based household in winter starts already during the summer time. The wood needs to be ordered and received (imagine the load of it you will need), chopped to the right size, organised into stacks for it to dry, after some time to be carried into an indoor place and organised to new stacks to keep it in the right shape for the cold times.. It's only from there that you can bring the firewood for your oven.
I think it's a personal relationship that will develop between you and your wood for warmth - the type that balances on love-hate borders.
And finally, a well deserved and heartfelt cure indeed..
posted by triin 德琳 at 5:47 PM
2 Comments:
not to mention the tearing in your eyes when the smoke gets in and the smell of something burnt in your hair ...geez...that doesn't go away for days because it's too danged cold to take bath. wunderbar.
haha Marcus, sorry, this one you've got all wrong. since the ovens (or their predecessors) have been there in the northern territories all the way since the very beginning - the oven-building standards include smoke's going out straight through the chimney and nowhere else. hair and others are safe : )
anyway, we shall go to the sauna instead!
so glad to hear from you, over such long time!! : )
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