Pleasures of the Fireside

The latest instalment from Wendy Wood's From a Highland Croft has me wishing my wood-burning stove was fixed. I really must get it sorted...

"I had intended to visit friends today but the log fire with its leaping flames was too good to leave, and I have volumes to move into a new bookcase made this morning. It is not a decorative affair, but it is sturdy, and I should be prouder of the job is I had not hammered my thumb with emphasis. It is where a bookcase should be, beside the fire, where I can stretch out a hand for a favourite book or a reference. I say "where a bookcase should be" but in this cottage, bookshelves, mostly over-loaded, are all over the place. Time to read and time to think - isn't that a real luxury? Here we have lovely places in which to do our thinking according to our moods: beside the couthy fire or out on the rough shore by the length of the loch and under the height of the sky; in the silence of the small room or by the noisy waves in singing wind. One minute I am out to get water at the well with the tang of winter on my face, the hills showing purple and deep blue in the fading light and the holly leaves silhouetted in detail against the evening sky, and the next minute I am inside at the fire and busy with the big bellows and amusing myself making long sighs or wee puffs, that make the flames and the sparks we used to call faeries go leaping up the chimney; with the smell of toast, the tinkle of a spoon in a saucer, all one's senses are satisfied."

That's just how I feel about living in this place. It's lonely and maddening at times - the threat of being cut off in the winter and those damn ticks and midges in the summer - but I too feel that overwhelming luxury of choosing where to do my thinking. I can wander up to the back of the woodland and pretend I am alone in the world. I can walk down to the pond and connect with the newts - those links to a far older world. I can sit by the window and look out enigmatically at the ridiculously beautiful view. Or I can snuggle up in a chair with my dog by a radiator (the stove being broken) and write or read a book from one of my many overloaded bookcases. Life doesn't feel so bad today...