BRATTLEBORO — The breezes have forced my neighbor's Macintosh apples to sway on their branches and turn Cover Girl red. I first noticed them two weeks back. My neighbors, Laurie and Paul, started their stove on Sept. 17; Jane and Andy, a few days later. But I have held out the longest by donning a wool sweater instead of giving in to the thermostat.
This is the game we Vermonters play in the fall of the year.
The woodstove has been ready since last spring, has stood cleaned, empty, even dusted from time to time for lack of use. Last night, when the thermostat read 55 and even the Icelandic wool sweater failed to comfort my unpleasantly cold bones, I resolved to light the stove.
I remove the bits and pieces of summer from the surface of my dear old friend, lifting first the vase holding the pinkish ivory hydrangea off the black iron, then the summer candles.
I lift the lid and crumble newspaper and shove it into the empty belly of the stove. I snap stiff twigs and lay them on top of the paper, as I would if I were in the kitchen assembling a trifle in a glass bowl. Bigger sticks are next, then bark, and finally two thin strips of oak.
The lighter doesn't want to spark. Perhaps it feels as I do, wishing it too early to awaken the cold iron of this beast of a woodstove.
By the third click, a fire appears out its end, which ignites the paper, which lights the twigs, which fires the bark and lastly the oak.
I leave the woodstove door slightly ajar and listen to the sweet song of the crackling, popping, wind symphony of the fire and settle into my solid maple rocking chair to enjoy the music of warmth. It crescendos now into a full orchestration of orange flame and expanding iron, filling me with comfort inside and out.
The thermostat edges toward a delightful 70 degrees, and I rock to the tune of the first fall fire.
I will not feel this way come January. I will not listen to the crackle or the pop. I will likely take my woodstove's song for granted.
But now, like a love reunited, I enjoy my woodstove's grand company and the song of October's virgin fire.