We almost lit the wood stove this morning. It was cold, but the picture above is not from today, it wasn’t that cold. The climate activist Bill McKibben spoke at my highschool once. The only thing that I remember is that he said he only turned on the heat in his house when the glass of water on his night stand was frozen solid by morning. Everyone thought that was ridiculous, and I still sort of do. 

Back then I thought it was ridiculous because the high profile climate action felt forced and a bit hair-shirted. Today I think it’s less ridiculous for all of the reasons I was writing about yesterday. Mostly economic. The longer you can go without turning on your heat the longer you can stretch the cords you bought last spring. 

We got out first propane delivery in months this morning, should last us through the whole winter because we don’t use propane to heat unless we’ve gone somewhere, which we never do. The man delivering the propane complimented my wood shed, he said it was real nice. When I told Abby she rightly observed that a compliment from a man like that counts for a bit more than a compliment from some city slicker like me, or her, or my mom, or my dad, or my sister, or virtually anyone I know. If the man who delivers propane in the Montpelier / Barre area says you have a good wood shed, you do. 

I was doing a bit of woodworking, planing some cherry boards, and he aksed if I did a lot of that. I said that I do, he said that he does not, he spends more time with firewood than he does woodworking. That just made his compliment feel all the better.