kindling

For those of us who do not know much about firemaking, or firestarting, and humanity's long history and long obsession with watching flames dance, it's quite a complicated process. Not really complicated, let me correct myself. It is some sort of deep longing, deep connection we have with it. We make a campfire, and we can stare at the embers flickering, at little flames licking and kicking up into the night sky. We watch the coals glow, we hear the pop and fizz of water trapped in a log being quickly found and done away with. The black smoke rises into a dark sky, losing it as our eyes cannot fit black on to more black, stars twinkling in between plumes. Green flames, blue flames, white and yellow and red flames. We stare, we are taken back, to some far away place long ago that we did not exist in, learning of our existence and of our importance by seeing that everything burns.

Why not be utterly turned into fire? Why not just lean back, prop your feet up, feel them toasty on the fire, your soles smoking lightly from a slight singe because you are too close?

For thousands of years, we have piled wood and whatever we can find to create heat, to put our hands together and rub them, blow into them for warmth and then extend them outwardly towards a heat that seems magical. That chemical reaction is happening inches from our fingertips, the release of energy being converted into heat and flame as a mass is consumed, and ashes are left.

How to start a fire? As any man knows, there is something primal about being able to actually get a fire going, inserting twigs and kindling, rolling up paper, maybe dousing it with gasoline or kerosene. And if he fails in his adventure, there is a part of him that feels lost, that feels as though this simple task must be, has to be, completed, for it makes him or breaks him. But that really is not true, just another one of the oldest types of lies. But starting a fire is quite simple, and of course, as most things are, very profound.

One of my favorite parts of a fire is kindling, the brittle yet flammable pieces put in. It's the best way to get a blaze going quickly, and it's acutally the blood sap of a trees that makes this. A tree is drilled with holes, bled out before cut down and the sap pools to the bottom. It hardens, collected, and then sold or given away. The life of the tree is the most flammable part of it, the first to go up. I think there is a lot to be learned there, and I almost have my finger on it.

Why not be utterly changed into fire? When we are hurting, bleeding, dying from whatever wounds we take over the years, it is good to know that those open wounds can actually be turned into something that can refine us and rebuild us and remake us. And that we can take hope in the fact that something bigger and better is happening. We just have to have the patience to let that blood harden, congeal, scar up and over, and watch as we start a fire. And we watch the world burn and as the flames rise and the smoke covers the sky, we can lean back and prop our feet, feel the heat began to singe our boots, and smile.

Give us the patience to become kindling.