A wood stove is at its best on a snowy afternoon. In winter's chill, it attracts all heat-seeking souls with its radiance. Quietly, with no moving parts, it warms daughter and our canine version of Leo the Lion, thaws out chilled feet and a frozen watering can for the chickens, all the while heating water to humidify the air and somehow broadcasting its beneficence to the far reaches of the house. It would cook dinner if anyone thought to ask.
But just beyond the woodstove's island of sanity, life is not making as much sense. The man's socks, for instance, don't actually match, nor do the seven other socks he found in the drawer.
During the housewide search that ensued, the man managed to find only two matching socks, which perhaps due to one's accidental trip through the dryer had lost their parity and felt a little funny on the feet.
Outside, the ducks are in a similar quandary. Winter has done something strange to their favorite pond. Their feet too are ill-equiped, lacking ice skates.
Once one has experienced the radiance and simplicity of a woodstove, it's hard to understand why the modern world largely turned its back on radiance, in favor of complicated machinery that at least in our house exhales tepid, often too-dry air through a labyrinth of heating ducts, warming all but satisfying none. (Sealing and insulating the ducts one of these days will surely improve the situation.)
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