The several days without power many Mainers recently experienced rekindled an appreciation of that old-fashioned winter lifesaver and source of comfort: the wood-burning stove.
“Fires became the center of our Maine winter, the hearth the throbbing heart of our home,” Margie Patlak writes. Photo by Margie Patlak
My husband and I discovered the blessings of wood-generated heat the first time we wintered in our summer home on the bay in Down East Maine because of the pandemic. With my husband’s distaste for frigid weather, in prior years we always migrated south along with the birds in late fall to return to our human flock in Philadelphia. That changed when the pandemic struck, transforming the city into a danger zone.
I worried that despite its baseboard electric heat, our summer home wouldn’t offer sufficient protection from the icy winds that whip off the bay during winter. As one of the workers helping my husband and me remodel it noted, the house belonged more in California than in Maine. I had to agree, given that most of our mid-century-modern house’s walls were glass so as to provide the full panoply of the bay in the backyard and the forest surrounding it.
This was its selling point for me. A nature writer and photographer, I wanted to be immersed in the wild world Maine offered. I wanted to see fog lumbering down the bay at dawn, hear the seals growling in the distance, smell the pungency of the pines, spruces and firs and watch strong tides paint multiple versions of the same seascape. We even took down internal walls in the house, transforming an entire floor into a glass and screened-in enclosure from which we could see, hear and smell the nature around us.
But what is an asset in summer can be a detriment in winter.
Although the walls of glass enabled us to spy bald eagles flying by and herons touching down on the bay during summer, they were drafty and cold during winter. Fortunately, part of our remodeling when we bought the house included putting an insert in the large fireplace in the living-dining room. This insert has a blower to push out the warmed air, as well as glass doors to prevent it from being sucked out of the chimney. We also installed a wood-burning stove in the fireplace on the lower level of the house, most of which is below ground, and kept the wood-burning stove in the laundry room.
So despite my worry, we found our “California house” surprisingly comfortable with its wood-burning stoves and fireplace supplementing the baseboard heat, or providing all the heat the few times we lost power during storms. Fires became the center of our Maine winter, the hearth the throbbing heart of our home. Its crackling pyres sanctified each new day when frost feathered the windows. We heated our clothes by the fire before getting dressed, and warmed our backsides in front of it after a long icy hike. We also ate by the fire, mesmerized by its jig of light.
I was especially grateful for how the fire brightened our dark evenings. Light at a time of darkness, light that lifted our spirits. We soaked up its radiating warmth that was like a hot sun beating down during summer. How appropriate as the fire emerges from the stored-up sunlight in logs that once were trees. Its warmth was as soothing as an embrace, a cuddle under the blankets. And its smoky scent wafted back memories of summer nights spent gathered around campfires underneath a glittering blanket of stars, firelight flickering on the faces of friends and family.
We already had many of these summer memories and felt fortunate that we could round them out with new ones, those created by experiencing a Maine winter in a California house.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story