To Build A Fire

I don't know if it is just this kid or what, but he loves to build a fire. What we just learned is that it really makes little difference as to the setting, if there is a fire to be had, he is engulfed. One has to wonder if there is some sort of inherent behavior in this activity.

In part, I say this is because I also enjoy the pleasure of the fire, not only to cook things as is being doing here in the snow, but for the warmth and interestingly, the aesthetics of it all.

At this very moment I sit next to a hundred year old pot bellied stove enslaved by it's warmth. We have a high efficiency furnace that heats the entire house to a very comfortable level and it is relatively reasonable to operate with gas being unimaginably cheap. We choose the the old stove for almost all of our heat.

The old stove is messy, ashes float in the air as I feed the oak to it, the floor is littered with chips, bugs, splinters and discarded bark. The room always has a slight waft of smoke floating, this is the odor of a fire on the frozen lakes of Wisconsin when we were kids skating by Goat Island. The warmth is radiant and tends to make me drift into afternoon naps so comfortable it can not be described except to note that the dreams of 3:30 are always pleasant and euphorically haunting--a dream of dreams.

I also enjoy the smell of split wood as I bring it in----along with all the other residue found in the shed, the residue that has to be cleaned. The cherry wood is almost fruit like, the oak strong and nutty, the maple smells cold, and the occasional pine smells of Christmas and forests, and needles under foot. On some occasions, I throw a piece of bark on the kitchen stove just for the smell, the birch of canoes and the north, the juniper and cedar of romance and blanket chests. The cottonwood of years of our living in a tepees out there in the west, the Bijou Basin, the Crazies of Montana, Jackson's Hole, The Yellowstone, the nights at Bent's Fort. Fires and smoke, warmth.

No wonder the kid loves the fire. He sits for hours just playing with little twigs aglow. He burns a few holes in his cloths and drops the hot dog in the fire only to be recovered and consumed. It is primal, it is in our genes, it probably has to do with survival, food, warmth. Life. He is a happy child.