Chapter 6: Wood and Words: Woodworking as an Analogue for Teaching and Writing

There’s nothing quite like a toasty wood stove on a cold winter day. We’ve heated our house with wood for 20 years now—ever since we moved into the farm house that had belonged to my wife’s grandparents. I grew up in a home with a woodburning stove, and ever since my early years, I’ve enjoyed basking in the warmth of a fire in the middle of a cold, dreary winter. It’s a reasonable substitute for the mood-elevating sunshine of summer. As a kid, I griped plenty about the hours spent cutting, splitting, and hauling wood to fuel our wood stove, but even then I was fascinated by the beautiful patterns that are revealed when wood is split—the growth rings, the varied tones in different species of wood, the iridescent rays that glisten in a split piece of oak.