Eco-friendly Fireplaces: A Green, Fuzzy Fireplace

(Page 3 of 3)

January/February 2007
By Carol Venolia 
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Where to get my firewood? In a nice bit of serendipity, I recently had a conversation with a tree surgeon whose bid for trimming the dead wood from our huge heritage oak tree included chipping the wood into mulch and hauling it away. When I asked if he would just drop it in the yard unchipped, he replied that it would be a huge volume of stuff. Fabulous! I'll have leaves for garden mulch, twigs to keep my compost pile aerated and kindling and logs for the fire.

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Up in flames

Now I'm faced with another choice: to see the flames or not to see the flames? Woodstoves without glass doors are more efficient, and they provide a marvelous central, radiant warmth. But there's nothing in the world like a view of flames.

Gazing into flames, we fall into a hypnotic reverie. Our minds and bodies fully engage in witnessing the glowing, flickering, licking mystery of fire. When people gather around a fire, staring into the flames and seeing each other's faces lit by the warm glow creates an intimate comfort that has no equivalent. Stories are told. Secrets are shared. Even in silence, people commune with each other. As Gaston Bachelard says in The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Beacon, 1964): "To be deprived of a reverie before a burning fire is to lose the first use and the truly human use of fire."

Everyone makes different choices. Some people love the ease and efficiency of a gas fireplace; a model with glass doors is still a pretty efficient heater. Some enjoy the simplicity of a symbolic hearth or a candle. As for me, I plan to have my flames, my truly central heat and the joy of being warmed by the gifts of my beautiful old oak tree.

CAROL VENOLIA is an eco-architect who is passionate about reuniting humans with the rest of nature. She is the coauthor, with Kelly Lerner, of Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House (Lark Books, 2006), and she codirects the EcoDwelling program at New College of California.

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