I start with a piece of brown paper bag. On it I pile thin pine, cut up pieces of lattice from a neighbor’s deck project. On that, one piece of 2 x 4 pine. I strike a wooden farmer match on the arc of the hole that holds the stove lid. One match starts the fire. I tip the match head down. When it’s burning well, I reach into the stove and hold the lit match against a brown paper edge. When the paper begins to flame, I let the match drop.
The fire is fairly quiet at first. There are a few crackles from the thin pine but the paper burns silently. I feel no heat. Inside the stove the flames burn bright. I leave the stove lid off and shut off the overhead light to enjoy the firelight. I sit directly in front of the stove in my chair, my gloved hands folded in my lap, waiting for the heat. Outside the sky begins to brighten, showing the trees. I sit quietly. I try to think of just one thing at a time, until I’m done with that one thing. Then I go on to the next. Sometimes it’s people represented by a face, sometimes it’s a problem, and sometimes they’re the same. When I'm done with those things I try to think of nothing at all. I close my eyes. When I find real quiet, I pray. It works best when I leave words behind altogether.
Here at our latitude we’re in the very short days. Ottawa is at about 41 degrees north. The sun comes up behind the trees and I can’t tell when it rises. Using the tables in The Old Farmer’s Almanac, I figure it breaks the horizon at about 6:59 in the morning and sets at 4:22 in the afternoon. I like to use a pencil and the almanac to calculate this, though I’m sure the Internet would give me the exact answer in a flash. Habit I guess.
Today we’ll have but nine hours and 23 minutes of daylight. Hard to warm up much in that little time, plus the sun’s not strong. This time of year the sun stays low in the sky and further away. Each day we lose a couple minutes of that weakened sun till the 21st of December when it is in the sky barely nine hours. Then it slowly adds a minute or two each day. On June 21st, when we max out on day light, we’ll have 17 hours and 14 minutes of sun. That’s six months from now. From the shortest day on it gets colder yet, the ground freezing, and snow. I can feel it coming.
When I feel the heat from the stove on my face, I add wood and replace the stove lid. There comes a time when the stove is so hot and with such a bed of coals you can add as big and as many pieces of wood as you want. But when the fire is new you can add too much and choke it out. I add but two more pieces of scrap pine and a single chunk of oak to this early morning fledgling fire. I turn my chair from the stove to the desk, switch from gloves with fingers to gloves without, open the laptop and switch it on along with the keyboard and mouse. Beside me, to my right, the little stove is roaring. I feel the heat radiating from it, first on my right ear, right shoulder, right thigh. The air in the shack is hotter now, yet still colder on my left. I open up the Word program, click on the file that holds the story, and stand up to take off my coat, scarf, and hat. I put them on a hook on the door. On the very cold days I just hang up my coat.
I read what I wrote the day before. Yesterday was a good day, 2100 words. If I can chain days like that together I can get somewhere. I like what I’m reading. I remember my place, what I was trying to say, and I know where the story is going next. I smile. I love it when a story comes together. It's like building a fire. I begin to imagine the words I’ll start with today. But first coffee.
I take my ibrik, the little brass pot for making Turkish coffee with the handle slanting up, from its hook by the stove and get coffee and sugar from the shelf. I put two tablespoons of finely ground coffee and a sugar cube in the ibrik, fill it with water from the bottle in the corner, then set it aside and put more wood in the fire. I load the stove up now, arranging the burned pieces so I can pack the stove box full of oak chunks, taking care not to burn my fingers on the hot steel. I throttle down the air to the stove, turning the wheel back. I put the ibrik on to boil. The water heats quickly so I stand with a yellow cotton work glove in my hand as a hot pad to grab the ibrik when the coffee boils to the top. As I wait I look out the big window behind the stove. It is brighter now and where I stand facing the stove I can see across the ravine. Squirrels chase each other on bare branches. Even with the leaves fallen from the branches I see nothing but trees from this window. I hear a bird but don’t see him.
Coffee boils over the top of the ibrik, sputtering and steaming, drops dancing on the hot stove lid. I lift it quickly with my glove and pour it in a small clay cup on my desk. There is a trace of whiskey in the cup still from yesterday’s nightcap. That’s OK. I stir the mix with a little spoon, take a sip, sit down, and begin tapping on the keyboard. It is now 7:16, the day is getting on, and I only have so much time.
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