Budbill: The December House

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(Host) While contemplating the likely effects of climate change and
global warming, commentator David Budbill thinks about what it means to
have an "open winter" – and a house with a woodstove.

(Budbill) Too many days lately, all its done is rain and sleet. "A wintry mix" the weatherman calls it.

It’s
December and I can’t help but wonder – where did the snows of
yesteryear go? I can remember humongous Thanksgiving Day snows, and that
was it for seeing the ground until May. Where have all those snowy
winters gone? Is this just some cycle we’re going through or is it the
dreaded global warming, climate change, everybody’s talking about?

It’s
nearly the end of the year and the temperature is finally beginning to
sink. Around our house, the ground is frozen hard, but there’s still no
snow. Will it ever come?

Now it’s cold enough to be almost
unbearable, even though in a month 20 below won’t seem that cold, but
just now 20 above seems painful, because our blood isn’t thick yet. When
there’s no snow on the ground, there’s no blanket to insulate
everything, to keep it, and us, warm.

Winters with little or no
snow are mean and ugly, hard to deal with because of all that dreaded
ice, ice, ice. Yet this is when the meaning of house begins to emerge
again. All summer it’s been hiding somewhere, keeping it’s meaning from
us.

Oh, we eat in the house and sleep in the house, but the
house really isn’t that meaningful in the summer. It’s warm outside in
the summer. The only reason for the house is to keep the bugs out; a
tent would do just as well. But now, now that we’ve come to the end of
the year, the house over the past month or so has become meaningful
again.

I think about those song lyrics: Oh, the weather outside is frightful.

But
here inside by the stove it’s delightful. A house with a woodstove is a
place to hide from the cold outside, a place where it’s warm.

Now
inside, next to the woodstove, when it’s 25 outside, it’s 75 next to
the stove. Back up to it, hands behind your back, palms out, the warmth
of the woodstove working its way into your body. Toast the back of your
legs, your butt, turn around and warm the other side. This is heaven.

There’s
nothing more satisfying – and as the song says, delightful – than a
house heated by a woodstove at the end of the year. Nothing can make you
feel more secure, even in these insecure times.

Oh! the meaning of a house with a woodstove, here at the end of the year.

Hear Neal Charnoff’s recent interview with David Budbill.

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