Don and I spent Christmas week playing gin rummy, sitting in front of the blazing fire. My snowbird friend was back for the holidays, as Florida is no place to be for Christmas. (My opinion only, and I’m sticking to it.) A fire, we agreed, is mesmerizing, primitive, elemental, particularly when the temps outside aren’t cracking zero for days on end. All plans for walking in the blizzard, blazing trails to the shore were forgotten, consumed by the draw of the fire.

A good friend, who recently moved back home to the area this fall, finally got her woodstove installed last week. With the very first fire she built the place felt like home.

“Now I can finish unpacking all the boxes,” she told me. Anybody who has once heated with wood mourns its absence forever – the smell, the warmth, the flickering light.

But then came the sound of sirens wailing up through the Hollow last evening, waking up the dog and bringing me to the front window. Who’s in trouble? Accident? Ambulance? Fire? It’s a rare enough sound in our quiet corner of the world, and there are so few of us that it’s likely to be personal.

Back in the day we called Peg Miller, perched above Pitcher Pond at the furthest end of North Lincolnville. Her scanner was on night and day.

“Fire engines just went by. Where are they going? What’s going on?” We could count on Peg for the latest information – “false alarm” or “grass fire ” or “car hit a tree” or the dreaded “so and so’s house is on fire.”

Last night I resorted to the LBB, our online town bulletin board, and learned it was a structure fire. The cottage on Wayne and Vicki Lanning’s land caught fire and burned, apparently gutted. Nobody was living there. No matter. It’s always a huge loss, one we all fear. We, their neighbors, townspeople all feel their loss.

We’re deep into heating season, and for many of us that does mean wood. We’re carrying chunks of dry ash and oak and maple into our houses, feeding them into the cast iron stoves that sit in the middle of our living space, building them up in the morning, banking them at night. Tending wood fires is a skill that takes at least a few seasons to master.

Once learned it becomes instinctual: you know the smell of a too-hot stove or one that’s smoldering and coating your chimney with creosote. Flick a fingernail against the stovepipe: does it ping brightly or clunk thickly? Guess which means a clean pipe.

Maybe you’ve heard the horrifying sound of a jet engine taking off up your chimney, raced outside and seen flames shooting out the chimney. That’s a heart-stopper, and unfortunately, I speak from experience. Thanks to those old guys – Stanton Collemore, Raymond Oxton, and so many others now gone – who climbed onto our usually icy roof (more than once) to lower their heavy chains down the flue to knock loose the smoldering chunks of creosote, our house is still standing.

Keep that metal pail with a tightly-fitting lid – never ever a cardboard box or paper bag or plastic bucket – outside, well away from any structure. It’s for the ashes you haul out every few days. Hot coals can survive more than a day in a cold stove. I personally know of two houses that burned because that simple rule was forgotten.

The trouble with becoming skilled at wood-burning, like anything else, is getting cocky, so sure of yourself that you stop paying attention. Maintaining a constant level of fear during heating season is a necessity. That means never leaving the house or going to bed without double, even triple, checking that everything’s properly shut down. I rarely head out the door, keys in hand, intent on a trip to town, without turning around and making the circuit of my two stoves one more time.

But more’s on my mind today than the vicissitudes of wood-burning.

A year ago this week-end Wally and I made our last excursion together, a trip to Augusta for the first-ever Women’s March. I wrote this that Monday:

My husband taught middle school his whole career. His educational theory, one of his many educational theories, was that to really learn something you have to hear it ten times. It’s a theory he still puts in practice; his sons, his daughters-in-law, his grandchildren – and certainly his wife – can attest to that.

Thanks to all the carefully archived stories, snippets of stories, and embellished stories (oh yes, he does that too) driving into Augusta for the Women’s March on Saturday was a trip down the bumpy road of my husband’s memory. We were sharing the one pink pussy hat I’d concocted out of random yarns and, after weeks of illness and inactivity, we were both ready for an adventure.

I’ve been coming to Augusta with him for nearly 50 years, starting with Mothers Day in 1968 when we delivered a present and card to his mother on Weston Street. I didn’t meet her that day, staying in the car while he knocked on her door and handed in his gift. For reasons of her own and which her son never could figure out, his mother was never satisfied for long. Every couple of years, it seems, they were moving.

In the years since, his whole childhood as it was lived out on those streets, has become like my own. I know where Smith School used to stand where he went through eighth grade, Farrington School where his brother was principal and a step-father was crossing guard, Buker School, and of course, Cony High School where he graduated in 1957.

I know that the U-Haul place on Western Avenue was once an A and P where my husband worked all through high school. I know that the walking path between Augusta and Gardiner is the rail bed for the train that he took, at age 17, to join the Air Force. When he returned home four years later the train was gone.

The drive from home took us past the Togus VA Hospital (drumroll under our breath in honor of the little cottage at the entrance where his life began) and over the Kennebec River (did he really clamber, at age 12, over the girders of the half-completed bridge on a dare?), that bridge thronged this day with sign-carrying marchers intent on the Capitol.

I certainly didn’t know, when I wrote those words, that he would be dead the following Sunday, barely six days later.

Needlework group meets Tuesday, Jan. 23 4-6 p.m. Bring a project to work on and join the conversation around the table. All welcome.

Leslie Devoe, chairman of the town’s Recreation Committee, kept us all up on the ice skating at Norton Pond this week-end via the LBB:

“Someone has cleared a skating area on Norton Pond, to the left of Breezemere Park. Thank you whoever you are! Now we need more shovelers to continue that good work and make tomorrow a real skating day.

 “Now there’s an even bigger skating rink to the right of Breezemere Park. Make sure to check it out and, please, pass the word! Volunteerism is alive and well in Lincolnville. Thanks so much to the new set of shovelers.

 “I asked our Lake Warden Dale Dougherty about the safety of the ice now for skating. He said there are 12-16 inches of good black ice on Norton Pond with 5-7 inches near shore. He agrees we should have an ice rescue ladder which is made of wood and flatter than a regular ladder. If someone will make it, I will paint it bright red and store it on my property which is right next to the hockey rink. Any volunteers?”

 Next came this from one of the shovelers:

 “Anyone interested in a pick up hockey game come on down to Norton Pond Sunday morning around 10:00AM.  There is a section shoveled off to the right of the boat launch. It would be nice to double that area to have a game on so bring a shovel.  Many hands make light work.  The ice is in great shape under the snow but there is the occasional rough patch to add to the excitement.  All ages welcome.  Anyone got 2 goals?

 “For those not into hockey but who just want to get out and skate, the potential is there to shovel off a short loop trail so feel free to come on down and help make it happen.  There is also an area shoveled off to the left of the boat ramp.

 “See you on the ice!”