I moved to Guerneville in September, from San Francisco. Guerneville is a tiny town on the Russian River, nestled in the redwoods, about 12 miles from the coast and two hours north of San Francisco.

It's cold here, compared to the other places in California that I've lived. (It's not cold compared to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Tahoe, or Seattle.)

I'm learning how to use a wood stove to heat my home. With starting a fire every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and then watching it thrive or subside all day, I have learned a lot about woodstoves, rather quickly. I've also been quite motivated to learn -- if I don't get a nice fire going, then either I'm cold, or I risk a creosote chimney fire.

This is a great set-up for learning!

• frequent practice
• low risk of disaster
• intrinsic motivation
• inexpensive practice
• rapid feedback
• friendly experts and advice.

Most of the things that I learned now seem like I should have known them instinctively -- I took physics in college! -- but I didn't.

Here's what I learned:

• wood has to be both hot and dry enough in order to burn.
• walnut wood that’s lived its life in a tree in a watered orchard and then in a pile (not a careful stack) is not very dry.
• Wood that is not very dry needs to be a lot hotter than dry wood in order to ignite and stay lit.
• Kindling is not just defined by diameter; it’s also needs a lower temperature to catch flame.
• Therefore, kindling should be either especially dry (kiln-dried) or especially oily (fatwood).
• A match won’t light a piece of cold damp wood.
• To get cold damp wood to become flaming, make it hotter and dryer.
• The way to get cold damp wood to be hotter and drier, and then to catch fire, is to light a fire with kindling near it.
• It is easier for a piece of cold damp wood to catch fire when it’s in a hot woodstove than a cold woodstove, because the heat of the woodstove raises the temperature of the wood, and dries it a bit.
• firelighters that will ignite dry kindling may not ignite cold damp wood.
• cold damp wood can’t really be started by a fire lighter; it doesn’t create enough heat to warm cold damp wood enough to catch fire.
• the fire has to heat up the stove itself, before the stove will start heating the room. once the stove is hot, it will radiate heat, and it will make it easier to light the next log.