Farewell 2023: Wishing you a Manageable Dose of Strife in 2024 for the Deep Satisfaction it Ultimately Delivers

I sit here as I often do - first one up, enjoying the solitude of the morning. I just lit a fire in the woodstove - which again, has been quite normal after we decided in 2021 to leave the city and move to our camp in Northern Ontario permanently.

But, here's what's different on this last day of 2023, as I sit here and reflect. I lit a fire because I wanted to, and not because it was needed for warmth. That is what I think it all is going to center on in 2024 for me; doing all the necessary things to make what was previously perceived as an obligation, into a luxury.

We made the big decision to move with a robust plan in order to have a safe and comfortable place for our family. That plan almost immediately blew apart. Not based on anything we did or didn't do "right" but because of an external factor around which we had absolutely no control (Spring 2021). This reality caused us to make a short term plan based on immediate needs or face finding another place to live in the middle of the pandemic.

Our camp was a 3 season non-winterized, and very modest place in Northern Ontario. So, my husband put on a miners light, crawled under the camp and proceeded to excavate. The camp was sitting mostly completely on the ground without a foundation or crawl space to create a space to move the plumbing that we could keep warm with an electric radiator so that when the weather turned our pipes wouldn't freeze. It was laborious. He used a shovel to dig, and a sled to pull the sand out from underneath. We needed a dozen or so feet long and 6 feet side as the most efficient footprint so it was a lot of digging and pulling.

We bought another wood stove in 2021 as the only other heating source was an ancient and inefficient propane fireplace that barely took the chill off the place. We put this second stove on the other side of the camp so that we could let one burn down and light the second one. We realized almost immediately that this was a necessity to clean them as it was a gigantic amount of wood we were burning as the camp was mostly not insulated and still had many old windows.

So this wood stove pictured in the title is red and I call her Ruby. Ruby and I have been very intimate over the last two and a half years. I have enjoyed making fires truly and watching the wood "catch" - there is so feeling like it.

AND, getting up at 2am because the fire went out and your entire home is freezing is the literal worst.

ALSO, getting a new fire to catch off the embers of the mostly extinguished fire in the middle of the night is extremely satisfying (versus having to restart).

FINALLY, the amount of time to chop, stack, dry, move, dry again, and clean the mess of the wood is a massive job - so if you go down any social media "trad" rathole I can disabuse you of the notion that this is a white-linen-in-a-field experience. It is dirty and exhausting.

Why all this detail? Back to the fire. I lit the fire this morning, just like I lit it 2 years ago and all the times in between - but it felt radically different today. We have, since we moved here, been working, and by working I mean hard. The year 2021 was survival and winterizing and hoping and praying we did enough and did it right. One February 2021 night it was predicted to go down to -37 and my husband said, "well, I guess this is the test - it it doesn't freeze tonight I think we are good" and it didn't! It was so validating to his efforts.

In Spring 2022 after a winter of Ruby #1 and Ruby #2 burning wildly we had made the calculated decision that it was a better risk to have a massive ice dam on the eaves and roof (because there was no roof ventilation - see 3 season camp) rather than have a freezing winter without enough heat inside. Yet another decision that was made for us in terms of focus. I felt I had much more control of things in the city but that too I think was an illusion - I just accepted the inevitable chaos of life less.

So, in the spring, after eyeing up the gigantic ice dam that has inevitably formed and realizing that there was not a single thing that we could do about it other than hope that somehow it melted slowly and evenly and slid off like magic, one evening with the largest noise the entire ice dam came off suddenly and took off the eaves, the fascia and part of the roof. So another decision made for us - it was the year that we would put on the red tin roof on, with the hopes we'd have a roof for life.

So finally Spring 2023 having done the infrastructure work in 2021 (new deep well, additional propane and a new properly sized septic tank) and with a new roof 2022 (repaired trusses and a whole lot of insulation and a few windows) we again were at the point of making a long overdue decision on how to make this place a real home from a charming but rustic camp. As much as we did have some great family time, living in very close quarters with kids and animals through the long winters in Northern Ontario definitely had some non-idyllic moments, and did I mention that my kids shared a closet sized room? So much of what we did next was for them, to have space and be able to thrive.

We searched and searched for the right contractor and partner, and when I finally found him we jumped. He unexpectedly was available earlier than we had planned so we just dove in not wanting to lose our coveted spot after so much time waiting and preparing.

Here's where it gets fun - after all the non-sexy and necessary work we had done to get to this point, we made the bold (and in hindsight wise) decision to lift our entire camp and build a new walk out level. We knew we had to raise it a few feet to fix and create the crumbling foundation - why not go up a bunch more?

This required a ton of technical expertise and experience from the contractor (which he had in spades) and a pretty big leap of faith from us to pull that proverbial trigger. We made this decision based on constraints (use the existing grandfathered footprint) and no big master plan. In fact we had no plans other than drawings on graph paper!

This was July - step one, lift the place, and put in a new ICF foundation. Once done and pine walls built, drop the original house onto a new strong foundation. I have to say - the lift was wild to submit to - but the thought of the whole thing crumbling apart when we tried to put it back together was just as nerve wracking.

These were all things that we simply had to do - with very little wiggle room and many constraints. Just like making the fire - it had to be done.

The fire is a constant - feed it, watch it and there is a comfort in it. It can be overwhelming too - not having enough wood, having wood that is not properly seasoned or simply forgetting to bring in wood to dry enough to burn - all create immediate problems, for which there is very little you can do to remedy other than get angry at yourself for your foolishness.

Back to my analogy at the outset, "I lit a fire because I wanted to, and not because I had to for warmth, and that is what I think it all is going to center on in 2024 for me."

As exciting as the actual construction is, and the process (we lived through it all in the house so had a constant education on how all of this comes together from the pros) the v2 of the infrastructure that we build in 2023 with the house lifted and with the affordance of a new foundation to be poured - centralized heat via radiant floors from a propane boiler now makes the fire a luxury and not a need.

I no longer wake up at 2am to light a fire than has burned out - the thermostat tells me the temperature. I no longer have extreme heat or freezing cold, it moderated and becomes something that I don't need to think about or plan and prepare for everyday. I don't have to haul wood in and out - or clean the mess when my husband pulls a dolly full up in a load, leaving bark and clumps of dirt in his wake.

I can still have the thrill of watching the fire catch without the sometimes overwhelming obligations that a woodstove-only solution requires. And it is in this duality that I think the lesson exists. The work and expense and stress of building the infrastructure - in usual life its the daily habits and practices and values - these things are worth the effort because the consistency of that effort provides the opportunity for luxury out of what before might have been an obligation or stress.

I lit the fire this morning while everyone else slept, enjoyed its flicker while drafting this musing. The cat always cozies up and appreciates the fire on his belly. I did it because I wanted to - not because I had to. There is a different enjoyment and appreciation because I know the other side of this, when lighting it was a requirement.

Only because of this experience and strife, do I think I see it this way. Had we had centralized heat the entire time I don't think I would have this appreciation at the level that I do, because even still - this morning, I caught the embers with a piece of cedar and it caught after blowing on it a few times, and man that is a satisfying feeling - EVEN if you are only lighting it for luxury and some additional warmth.

Wishing you a wonderful 2024 - with some strife so that you have a deeper appreciation for the beauty all around.

Couple of fun postscripts.

Here is the camp when it owned by Dr Sagle until the 2000s (so many years that many people ask if I own Dr Sagle's camp)

We purchased the camp from a friend of my husbands Dr MC Glibota in 2016 and they had done some renovations to the roofline in particular you'll notice.

Now, the overgrown rock garden (sorry Dr Sagle I know for many years it was your pride and joy!) and the awkward slope and the rickety stairs are all obsolete as the lifting, the extension of the deck by 4 feet and the redistribution of the sand at the side of the camp resolved these "challenges" A little emotional too - that play set was used by Dr Glibota's kids as well as mine but is no longer there - all those kids have up and grown too big for a playset (mine turned it in to a hazard waiting to happening swinging it off its footings for fun!)

Like everything, nothing is constant though - and I think we have saved the best parts of the camp while pushing along on her evolution :)