Burnin' Love

AUBURN, Maine - The 1905 red-hot wood stove has been working overtime while weathermen have been forecasting doom for the Northeast for the past seven days. 

This gives panicked New Englanders an opportunity to race to the grocery store to purchase food and scramble to find the local number to FEMA for a one-day event that will end life on the planet as we know it.

After all, the apocalypse is upon us as another ho-hum Nor'easter roars up the coast.

But this coast-hugging storm could also turn out to be a dud, too.

Ignoring the storm prognosticators has become a way of life for all sane citizens living in the hinterlands of the Pine Tree State.

But worrying about facing certain destruction from the latest coastal storm is fruitless, especially since my wood stove, a holdover from the Teddy Roosevelt administration, still provides heat and comfort. 

It is an iron monster capable of surviving a nuclear blast. The stove's warmth is a way to use less oil even though this cast-iron beast leaves a carbon footprint the size of Big Foot's feet. But rationing oil still remains an admirable goal. The price alone of this black gold is enough to make any homeowner shiver in these hard times. So for many of us, wood is our alternative energy source — for the moment.

So, let it snow and the cold wind blow!

I will watch New England's day of reckoning huddled around a small inferno, sipping coffee and listening to Mozart, Neil Young, Benny Goodman....well, you get the picture.

For the past five years, I learned how to burn things and light up a wood stove without burning my home down. There is a knack to building the perfect fire — and keeping it going for all eternity — or for at least for most of the winter. 

Mainers are experts when it comes to starting a wood-stove fire up here in cold country. There are tricks to heating a house without triggering a conflagration, and over time, I have become a well-trained arsonist who knows how to light 'em up with dry wood and proper kindling. There is technique involved here, and I have become an expert with fire as my Iron Hulk heats up the entire house from downstairs.

The glowing stove from another century takes the chill out of your bones and turns my unfinished basement into a sauna while winter's fury carries on.

Of course, I am always looking for consensus as a journalist, and that means asking wood-stove veterans to share some of their hot tips on burning wood. I learned from the best to keep the home fires lit without torching my home in the dead of winter.

The approaching storm did not send me scurrying to buy food or rent dozens of movies. We all know the power never goes out in a Nor'easter, our DVD players run on magic, and food never goes bad when the electricity disappears after branches snap wires across a state that has the most trees in the union.

Nah, that never happens!

I will just put another log in my fire-eating stove as another coastal snowstorm adds another blanket of fresh powder — and drink coffee, of course.