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Fire, I miss it. I have no fireplace, no wood stove, no gas stove. I’ve got an oil furnace flame. That’s it and that’s nothing to look at. What I thought I needed was a fire pit. I knew the landlord wouldn’t mind and it is not against town burning ordinances. I’ve looked at the manufactured ones online. It is always good to have something you want to buy to look for online, when you don’t have a fire to look at. I decided I’d rather harvest some rocks from the property and make fire the old fashioned manly way.
I could easily picture the kindling roaring to life, orange yellow flame licking the wood, then red, then blue. Later, the glowing embers like a city viewed from a distance going to sleep.
I pictured my two adult sons sitting shoulder to shoulder with me, with no thought of checking their iPhones, talking into the night, maybe with a glass of wine, inner glow meeting outer. I can hear the crackling, cracking, popping and stray spark sizzle.
And yes, I could see to the campfire glow silhouetting the dancing smoke against the growing dark.
Maybe we would cook some meat, the way meat should be cooked, and smell the glorious aroma.
Geeze, I was getting all poetic over a fire that wasn’t even lit yet and then came the memories.
Childhood camp fires tended by my father on trips to State parks with my parents and siblings. Letting my children play safely with matches for the first time. Being a camp counselor taking children, who had never slept in a tent, to sleep out under the stars, held safe by the fire that kept at bay the ghosts well enough to bring sleep to young minds, recently exposed to ghost stories told around it.
Then there was the time, that my brother and I over estimated how much is too much time hiking with a back pack, in freezing mist, to avoid hypothermia. To experience trembling hands and mental confusion while trying to get damp tinder to light, is to experience pure gratitude for what a fire can do.
I have recited poetry at men’s gatherings and yes beat drums around a fire. I have cheered my high school football team as they ran by a bonfire. Fire energy can be heady stuff.
I got the Prometheus Greek myth about the Gods getting pissed that a fellow god would share this power with stupid mortals. Being cursed to spend eternity having a eagle eat out your liver, grow your liver back, have it eaten again, seemed kind of harsh punishment, but I can see why fire was one of the gods favorite playthings and why they didn’t want to share it.
So I scouted for some rocks, collected some dead branches, but then stopped. Did I really want to smoke up the neighborhood, gaze with worry as to how sparks can fly riding thermal waves even with no wind and make sure that fires were out, when I was done with them? Would feeling a fire fail to delight me as it once did? Were the Greek gods mostly correct, that men think they know, but don’t really know how to manage fire power?
When I gave this question some honest consideration I began to fear for my liver. Perhaps men weren’t made to eat stuff that is cooked. Without cooking most stuff men eat doesn’t taste so good. I think animals would rather not be eaten as much as they are by people. I think the deal with animals eating other animals is they eat the weak ones to leave more food for the strong ones. I think plants are mainly down with their regenerative parts getting consumed. These taste the best raw. When plans give people a piece of fruit, people provide fertilizer and seed spreading in return. Plants like this. I think the fertilizer part could be the same deal with animals eating weak animals and returning the favor by fertilizing the plant food source of their prey.
As for heat, perhaps cold is natures way of telling people it is time to move on, not time to light some fires. Perhaps not time to skin an animal for a coat either. If Nature can’t get men to get the hint, maybe it sends an ice age.
May be men were designed to make tools out of sticks and chipping some flint. Copper, quartz crystals on occasion, no chipping required, but smelting ores? What were we thinking? Okay better ways to kill other people who are in completion for resources, I get it, but doesn’t sharing and trading work more efficiently?
Fire brings us what we get from burning fossil fuels. It gets us interesting in fooling with radiation as a fire alternative. Is there really a way for man to use fire without getting burned?
Fire is great for letting plants know when there are too many of one kind of plant and not enough of an other. I hope it is not Nature’s way of indicating that enough is enough with homo sapiens already.
So, I’m going to forgo the fire pit for now, but I am not moving to Florida. I like living where I’m at more than I am uncomfortable with the oil heat. I will keep the little hand saw I bought for the purpose, in case the power grid goes down. I will pray for forgiveness for what my species has done with fire. I will pray that the radiation and gases we are are stuck with are enough of a warning that more praying is in order, that the fire of men goes to hell.
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