Growing up, a lot of my friends would vacation with their families during the summertime.
My family however, always took a week long vacation during the winter months.
We traveled a few hours north to our favorite lake and we’d stay in a cabin that we owned. As a kid, I always thought this was mundane and boring because we couldn’t actually enjoy the lake during the winter. The adults in the family always loved going to the cabin during the cooler months because they loved the snow, burning fire in the fireplace, and eventually the hottub. As I got older, I too enjoyed going to the cabin during the cooler months. There was a woodstove in the living room of the cabin that my dad always tended to during our vacation. He loved putting the wood into the stove and watching it burn. There was an incredible amount of heat that came from that wood stove and it did an excellent job at keeping the entire cabin warm. I admired my dad for taking care of the woodstove so that everyone else could relax, and I was determined to be just like him. One day, he finally agreed to teach me all about starting the fire in the wood stove and the safety measures that he took in order to keep everyone warm and safe. He taught me everything he knew and I learned a lot about heat and air that I didn’t know before. This year, he finally passed the torch (literally) to me and he allowed me to keep our cabin warm during the entire week for our family. It was an honor.