Ambient Noise

     For forty years I lived on the mountain without electricity. I heated the house with a wood-burning stove, used kerosene lamps for light, and had a small propane cookstove. 

    With no motor noises, it was blissfully quiet at my house. 

    But I paid a price for that blissful silence. Kerosene lamps are messy and smelly and take constant work refilling the lamps, trimming wicks, cleaning chimneys. I hauled propane tanks up the hill on my shoulder. I stacked firewood for the winter, then brought it by the armload into the house, trailing bark and woods debris onto the floor. I chopped kindling. I took laundry to the laundromat. 

    Twelve years ago, when I moved into a new house on the mountain, with electricity, life became smoother and easier. I was happy not to be dealing with fuel. The noise of the washing machine was worth the convenience of washing clothes at home. The refrigerator sits behind a closed door, so its occasional noise is muffled. Life on the mountain was still pretty quiet. 

    And then, last month, I installed a heat pump. 

    A heat pump, I was told, is efficient. It will cool the house as well as heat it. Its hum, I was told, is minimal. Besides, I was finally told (with a bit of exasperation), I can use it only when I want it, with the expectation, I think, that I would want to use it all the time, given its convenience.

    Certainly it is convenient to heat the house at the click of a button or to program the machine to come on automatically every morning, but I still find myself performing the familiar morning ritual, kneeling in front of the stove to light the fire, coaxing the flame into a red-hot blaze.

The hum of the heat pump, I'm finding, is bothersome, after all. I like the silence of the woods around me. I don't ever want to go back to kerosene lamps and propane tanks—I am grateful every day for my electricity. But I'm in no hurry to trade my ritualistic wood-burning stove for the hum of the heat pump. The heat pump is there when I need it (and I'll probably really need it for cooling the house in the summer), and that's satisfaction enough.