The outdated wood burning furnace
I grew up not knowing what arctic weather was like, sure I had seen it on TV & knew what it looked like, however I literally could not conceive of that level of cold.
I lived in a place where all of us wore shorts & flip flops from January through January… Now I live in a place where shorts & flip flops don’t exist.
This is the far north, rough & rugged tundra that separates the men from the boys! I easily don’t miss the outdated afternoons, even though the drastic arctic temperature is hard to deal with occasionally. Air conditioners do not exist up here, because there are only a few weeks a year that rise into the 60s or occasionally even the 71s on a recognizably warm summer. On the other hand, heating is drastic business, & you not only need to have it, you also need to think how to repair it when it breaks! Your nearest neighbor may only be a half mile away, but in the snow depths brought on by Winter it might as well be ten miles, so you need to be able to keep your furnace running by yourself. I have a mighty wrought iron stove & furnace in the middle of our main room. It is a wood burning furnace, & for generations it was the only source of heat for the place, I have been told. It still works & ever, but it is a hassle to keep feeding it wood, so I use our space gas furnaces most of the time.