Phooey. Looks like I’ll have to get more wood this season, after all. And here it’s been so warm until that snow forty-eight hours ago, I thought I could skate by. There’s hardly any actual firewood in this shot or anywhere else, either. The rounds that look like chopping blocks aren’t piñon, but logs that were lying around and got sawed up by a friend of mine who was cleaning up the neighbors’ yard. It’s something unsplittable and vile like elm or cottonwood. As you can see, my splitting maul is temporarily stuck. In keeping with the relaxed vigil of spring, the thing can stay there for a while.
In any event, I have to have a wood stove. They work. I see people selling homes that don’t have wood heat and I think they’re crazy. Just a few years ago, Taos had its natural gas cut off for a week when the temperature dropped to 26 below. No gas for radiant heating systems except propane. Oh, the humanity! There were people freezing in their fancy houses huddled under blankets with electric heaters. We couldn’t take a bath or cook easily on my little camp stove, but we never felt the cold. Just look around, the mountains are covered with trees!
I mean, come on…
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)