Your Saturday Firesmith

Peg is a friend of mine from a long time ago. We have a very complicated past, she and I, and it's nothing I would ever write about, or discuss with anyone else. The fact that we live four miles apart is purely by accident, unbelievably, but we don't socialize with one another that much. We ping each other, like deep-sea animals using sonar; a phone call, an email, or something like that and we have supper or lunch once in a while.

Peg bought a beat up old farm house back in the mid 1990's and decided to rescue it. It's one of those wood frame house built in the 1950's, an old farmhouse and Peg has done a miraculous job on it. There's an old barn out back, and a shed attached to it. There is also what I think just might be the world's largest and oldest Magnolia tree just off her property. Peg owns a couple of acres of land, and that's really where this story is heading. We took down a couple of few trees here and there over the last year, and she stockpiles all her yard debris to have one great big fire once a year. Saturday was that once a year time for a fire. I was the first person she called and I was the first person there.

Peg knows me well enough to know that I would like to start the fire. I'm like a kid that way; me, me, oh let me start the fire! There is a huge pile of debris to be burns including a very large selection of former tree sections. At nine in the morning, I set fire to a bunch of leaves that sets fire to a pile of small twigs that sets fire to a mass of moss and twigs and we have a fire. I watch as it fights against the coolness of the morning, the dampness of the fuel, and the light breeze. The fire heats the wood, dries the fuel and the slight breeze kicks the whole thing into a real fire.

Peg is methodical. Each and every task she ever takes on she takes it on as if she were a surgeon.  Her fire pit is sided with sheets of tin, and there is a slight swale dug around it. She's soaked the ground around the pit down with water and the hose is near by. Peg is quite possibly the smartest person I know, and she's also one of the best thinkers I have ever met. We feed the fire and discuss the state of free speech in America, and whether or not the internet is a good medium for information. We build the fire up until it's above the pit then we sit and watch it burn down a bit. We build the fire up until it's above the pit then we sit and watch it burn down for a bit.

Jewel shows up after lunch and with three people, the work goes even faster. Jewel is a woman I met at a burning years ago and she understands fire. Jewel's ancient black lab died last year and she still hasn't fully recovered yet. They were together for over fifteen years and Mutt Lee was the only dog I knew who cooked his own food. He liked to eat hickory nuts that were burned in the fire, and if there weren't any in the fire Mutt Lee would go get them off the ground and drop them into the fire.  Jewel raised the bar for the care of a companion animal and I honor that in her, and she knows it. She also knows how to put a beer bottle into a big fire so that it melts and doesn't shatter.

More people arrive but by the time they do, we're nearly done. All the big stuff is in the fire, and burning merrily. We break out the beer and sit and watch the fire burn. I drift away from everyone, even though I'm sitting right there with them. The fire is a massive bed of coals and even twenty feet away I feel the heat. I listen to Peg given an acolyte lessons on how to use a chainsaw. Neither of them are drinking until the last stump is cut, which is the lesson, and the acolyte is nervous. I don't think Peg would teach anyone to use a chainsaw who wasn't afraid of it.  There is, betimes, wisdom in fear.

The stump is the last bit of fuel and it burns very slowly. More and more bottles have been buried under the coals and now I'm feeling that warm buzz of exhaustion and alcohol. As the sun begins to ease away we sit and watch for the first star. There it is! A tiny pinpoint of light, hardly visible appears above a pine tree's top needles. We debate as to whether it's a start or a planet. It's declared a planet and we then debate which one. Another star appears and we begin to look for more. A third joins us and all of a sudden there is a very slight chill in the air. We talk about the things that we always talk about, and when I look up again I can count a dozen stars which have decided to join the party. The next break in the conversation and the sky is beginning to get crowded.

The beer wears off but the exhaustion stays with me. Tired as I am, when I get home, I look up at the same starts that hung above the fire. It was a good fire, that, and in a relative way, the stars are made of fire too. The mutts have missed me, and I'll have to lie down on the floor and let them snuffle me. But another great fire has once again burned, and another night has been filled with stars.

Take Care,

Mike