I had heard the expression “of hearth and home” throughout my life, but it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was just sort of wallpaper. I thought of it as a single unit, too—hearth-and-home—which primarily meant “home” to me. It didn’t occur to me why this expression might have arisen, and I didn’t contemplate the fact that “hearth” was not only given equal weight with “home,” it actually came first.

 

I had some vague ideas about the historic importance of a hearth for humans from my high school studies concerning early man and inchoate civilizations. It was what cooked their food, warmed them in the cold, and kept certain animals at bay. But even though my family had an ornamental fireplace that we would build a fire in for special occasions such as Family Fun Night or Christmas Eve—and I loved lying as close as I could to it, toasting first one side of my body on a frigid Kansas City winter night, then the other—it didn’t instill in me an understanding for the deep, primal concept of a hearth. Our main heating came from a furnace in the basement that heated water for our radiators, and my mom cooked our food on a gas range. There weren’t any dangerous animals, except for a scary Great Dane down the street and a particularly vicious miniature poodle up the street.

 

In the eighties, Richard and I and his sister Kathleen and her husband Joe decided to build a home on a few acres of land. Favoring a back-to-the-land approach, we chose to have a wood stove and passive solar for our heating. Coming, as we did, from back East—Connecticut and Massachusetts, which also have long, frigid winters—we actually thought that we wouldn’t be using the woodstove much here in sunny California, that our passive solar design would give us most of the heat we would need. That did not turn out to be correct.

 

Natives are no doubt getting a good chuckle right now.

 

We ended up burning about two-and-a-half cords of wood a year. We found that, during a rainy winter, we could go days, even weeks, without getting much solar radiation, and we were getting at least one snow a year. I loved the sweet little oscillating whistle that our stove, a Fisher Baby Bear, made when it was burning optimally, and it was very efficient for a wood stove. It could heat up our entire home, which, admittedly, is not that big. But we were constantly tripping over the stupid little brick “hearth” we had built around it, and we had to be careful never to touch it while it was in use or we would burn the holy crap out of ourselves. When it was cold, we had to keep it burning constantly, and that meant usually getting up at least once in the middle of the night to feed it. If we didn’t, we had to start all over in the morning, with paper, tinder, and kindling. But there was an important aspect about it that we liked: If the power went out, we still had heat.

 

So when we decided that we needed to replace our wood stove, we gave very careful thought to what we should replace it with. Propane, kerosene, pellet stove? Baseboard heat? The way we had built our house, with open beams, precluded forced air. I had been lusting after a soapstone masonry stove from a Finnish company, Tulikivi, which apparently produced practically no emissions because it burned so efficiently, and the soapstone stored the heat from a few short, hot fires so that it would radiate warmth for 24 to 36 hrs. The soapstone has a high specific density which stores up large quantities of heat and then re-radiates it very slowly.  The stove’s design is based on technology developed during Europe’s last mini Ice Age that started in the 1500s, and it has been perfected through the centuries.

 

But they were very expensive. As you might imagine. Soapstone shipped from Finland.

 

Still, we were getting weary of having to rely upon wood heat. We wanted a break. Richard decided it was time to install a bank of photovoltaics for our electricity needs, and that this would make it economically feasible to have something like baseboard heat.

 

Unfortunately, I hated the idea of baseboard heat for aesthetic reasons. I like a clean look, with surfaces that beg to be touched: tile, polished hardwoods and softwoods … granite … We’d have to cover up our baseboard with utilitarian heating units, baseboard that I had sanded painstakingly. The units would get dusty. I’d have to dust them. Every time I looked at them, they would annoy me.

 

Propane, kerosene and pellet stoves were possibilities, but for some reason, they all left me feeling lukewarm instead of fired up. With a pellet stove, when the power went out, we wouldn’t have any heat. They relied upon electricity to power a fan that distributed the heat and the feeding mechanism that fed the pellets to the ignition source. I didn’t trust the price of propane not to skyrocket, given the fact that it’s a fossil fuel, and those resources can’t remain cheap forever, not with a limited supply and a growing world population. I can’t remember now what my objection was to kerosene, but it could have had to do with having to figure out where to store the kerosene, and the fact that prices could rise on that as well.  

 

 

So we bit the bullet. We ordered one. The U.S. distribution company who installed it did a great job on the masonry, but they were such a nightmare to deal with in so many other respects, I’m sorry to say I can’t recommend them to anyone. But fortunately, they’re gone now and the stove remains, and it is a daily pleasure, even though it has taken getting to know the stove and interacting with it in a very organic, mindful way, to use it well. For one thing, it takes a while for the stones to heat up. So, we have to plan ahead and figure out when we want the stove to be producing the most heat. This is not going to be in the middle of the night when we’re sleeping. We also don’t want to get it too hot if it’s cold one day but predicted to warm up considerably the next day, because the stove will continue to radiate for 24 to 36 hrs, and that can be a long time to have your home too hot, even if you open up all the windows.

 

Conversely, we have had to plan ahead in the opposite direction in order to be able to have the stove warm when it is cool or very cold outside. It doesn’t become warm instantaneously. This means we need to be more on top of the weather forecast in order to do this effectively. Not everyone wants to think about their heat source in such a complex and intimate way, but it suits me and Richard. The stove seems like a living entity, one that requires attention and care, but that gives back in so many ways.

 

When it’s freezing cold outside and the wind is howling, and our soapstone stove is sitting in the middle of our home with all its regal solidity, quietly emanating its lovely radiant heat, we feel safe and protected. If we’re chilled from being outside, we can literally snuggle up to the stove. Sometimes it’s hot enough that you don’t want to leave your bare skin against it for very long, but you can’t ever burn yourself on it. And most of the time, it’s just warm and inviting. (In the summer, it’s cool, which feels very nice to lay your cheek against if you’re hot.)

 

The safe, warm, protected feeling that this stove engenders has finally brought home to me the true meaning of a hearth. I had no idea what a powerful one it could be. Richard and I may have to be more involved in our heating than we would if we simply had forced air or radiators, but for us, this lack of convenience is more than made up for by the emotional connection it creates with something deeply encoded into our most primal human existence.