Sitting by the Woodstove, Pondering
I am sitting by a warm wood stove in the cold months of the year. Life doesn’t get much better than this. I have turned the living room chair so that my feet dangle eight inches from the cast iron. There is about a fifteen degree temperature difference from my toes to my ears. I lean over to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf along the wall and without moving any part of my body besides my arm and eyes, I grab Regarding Willingness by Tom Harpole. Lest anyone think I am a book snob who reads philosophy books in the pre-dawn lamp light, I must clarify that this is a local author. One hundred pages from a guy who lives 50 miles from my front door, telling tales of horse logging, chainsaw incidents, rescuing people who have fallen into the dumpsters at the Powell County transfer station. And a story about skydiving with Russian cosmonauts, but hey, there are some local folks around here who have led unbelievably interesting lives that you will likely never hear about. And so here I am, with m