Small, Useful Fire: #3

November 11, 2023 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire

Two days of hiking in the rain, with temps in the 30’s, just above freezing. We had spent the previous night in a small shelter with 20 other hikers and about that many mice, so there hadn’t been much actual sleep. We were tired, and tired of being cold.

We crawled into camp in the last few minutes of daylight. Tents were going up. I could hear people thinking how nice it would be to sit around a nice, blazing campfire for a while. Some kind trail angel had left large pieces of dry wood in the shelter and it had been arranged in the fire pit, There were obvious signs of attempts to get it burning, but there had been no success. Now it was getting damp.

You can’t hold a match to a large piece of wood and set it on fire. It’s too big of a jump. You must start small, with kindling, and add progressively larger pieces of fuel until the heat load is enough to start the burn in the large piece. It’s a simple principle. But there is a major deficit when any available kindling has been rained on for two days.

I admit to being prideful when it comes to starting fires – one of my many faults. That was part of why I decided I would have a fire that night. The other reason was that I knew people could die of hypothermia and I didn’t want to be one of them. I was hoping this potential blaze would feel my affinity for fire and respond.

Looking in sheltered places, I did locate some less damp sticks and leaves and took my stash to the fire pit. My hope was that a small flame would dry out more of the kindling, if I could keep it alive. It takes getting close and intimate, and it takes patience. I knelt and started tending “the baby”. That’s exactly what it is, a baby fire. It must be given another leaf, another twig, another blast of oxygen, and never allowed to die.

No one wanted to help with this and some probably thought I was crazy to waste time trying to burn wet wood. I was too cold to do anything else. My daughter was setting up our tent, leaving me free to be crazy. I put my face close to the flame and blew gently until I had no more breath, then turned and got a gulp of fresh air, over and over. The dampness was creating a lot of smoke, but that gave me hope that things were drying out a little.

The end of this story is, of course, that the fire progressed as I had hoped. As the larger pieces of dry wood caught and turned into a healthy blaze. It was lovely and it was regarded as near miraculous, which added to my pride, but I knew. It was no miracle but rather persistence, motivated by need. We all enjoyed getting warm again before getting in our sleeping bags for the night.

And my personal attraction to a small, useful fire grew. An intriguing, mysterious gift is what it is… just sayin’.

Small, Useful Fire: #2

November 9, 2023 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire.

Those two trees were a major fixture in the backyard. At one time, before we moved there, they even had a border of heavy timbers defining the area around them, because it was hard to mow around their roots. I especially like trees, at least most all of them, so it was hard when some kind of beetle infested them and they began to die. I clearly remember the day when my landscaping friend and his brother came over to cut them down, carefully, one piece at time, until there were only stumps.

The mound, covered with ferns, but the stumps are in there.

I don’t like stumps nearly as much as I like trees, although I have done some interesting things with them. These stumps were not the interesting kind at all. It was an easy decision to get rid of them, but not so easy to figure out how. Although they had been cut very short, they had multiple exposed roots and the mound on which they sat seemed impenetrable. There are people who would have hired a stump grinder or a backhoe and the stumps would have been torn out in a hour. But, I have never been a big machinery person, and I am patient. A small, useful fire would be just the thing…

And so it began. Numerous campfires were built on the mound and the stumps got smaller. It wasn’t quick, because they were stumps at least eighteen inches in diameter, and our campfires were always extinguished within an hour or two.

Then came the day that I decided to clean the file drawers. Years worth of bank statements, old tax returns, outdated warranties and instructions for things we no longer owned, and more – it all had to be destroyed and paying to have it shredded was not an option. It was not an option because I like to burn things (things that should be burned).

I sat by the stumps, feeding the fire for hours, shifting my position to keep out of the smoke. By evening all the paper was gone but the mound still glowed with heat. I did not want to douse it with water but for safety’s sake, I did. Smoke billowed out. The flames disappeared.

Smoke rises from one of the outlying roots, still burning.

The next morning, I saw a small trail of smoke, rising from the mound. It looked like a small volcano. The ground was still warm too, and I realized that fire had been slowly advancing underground, along the roots, during the night. The mound was collapsing. I couldn’t have been happier.

Fire underground. Who would have thought of its usefulness?

This story also reminded me of the underground fires in Centralia, PA. We drove through the area and saw wisps of smoke rising randomly over the landscape. The coal mind there has been on fire for over 60 years. That fire has turned Centralia into a ghost town. As fires go, it is neither small or useful.

Small, Useful Fires: #1

November 4, 2023 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire.

The cook stove sits in my dining room now. It isn’t hooked to a chimney and never holds a fire. Instead it serves as a bookcase for cookbooks and a plant holder for the pot of ivy.

It was the center of life in my grandmother’s kitchen and it was most probably the start of my attraction to small, useful fires. My young self found it irresistible and I would watch when Grandma put the iron handle in the round cover and lifted it off the firebox. The wood had to be split small, and only three or four pieces would fit in at a time, but it burned hot when asked. It cooked Sunday dinner for us most every week while we went to church.

I remember the kitchen as it was then, half of a larger room where the meal was served. Imagining a clock face, the cook stove would have been at 1.

A long counter with cupboards above and below took up the whole north wall to the right of the stove. The double sink was somewhere near the middle of the counter underneath a wide window looking out on the driveway. This wall would be numbers 2, 3, and 4 on the clock.

Number 5 would begin the east wall and it started with the wash basin, a single porcelain piece with rust water stains and a “swill pail” underneath. It was where working hands were washed, where Grandpa shaved as he looked at himself in the metal cabinet hanging on the wall. On a hook to the right of the sink hung things like a towel, a fly scatter, an apron and a razor strap. That is all I know of razor straps because I never saw it being used for shaving, although I might have heard that one could be used for whipping naughty children. I probably read that somewhere.

Number 6 on the clock face would be the front door leading out to the porch that ran part way along the east side of the house. The wall next to the door held the refrigerator, and a long wooden raised box. It was a curious piece of furniture that might have been a planter, but was always filled with magazines, newspapers and “stuff”. It was a little less than waist high and may have had a shelf below. I am surprised that I don’t remember more about it because I know I helped Grandma dust and clean it in later years. Above this box was the east window and the phone, fastened to the wall near the corner.

Number 7 was the door to Grandma’s bedroom, which was almost always open, probably to keep it as warm as possible. The door began the south wall and next to it was the china cupboard, and then a freezer, numbers 8 and 9.

Turning the corner, numbers 10 and 11 on the west wall contained a long “bureau” as Grandma would have called it. There were pictures, stacks of letters, small china knick knacks holding collection of buttons and curiosities adorning the top of this piece. It had drawers storing tablecloths and pretty, useless things Grandma was saving. I was curious about their contents and I know I looked in them from time to time, but don’t remember what I saw. At the ends of the bureau were doors hiding more things I desired to look into, but didn’t. Back then, there was a sense of privacy, even in Grandma’s house.

The last number on the clock face, 12, was near the middle of the west wall. It was the door into the living room. To the right of it stood the cook stove. We have gone full circle. In the south half of the room was the dining table. We all sat there to eat no matter how many of us there were. It was also the table where Grandma wrote countless letters to her daughters, her friends and to me. The center of the table always held the salt and pepper, butter, perhaps a vial of vinegar, napkins. And it was covered with a small cloth. Grandma had a special spoon that she liked, and a favorite cup that she made sure was always set at her place on the table.

And this. A small plate-like piece of china. It was not named, but was always there where it belonged, without question. It held a hot cup, like a coaster, or a wet spoon, or tea bag.

The cook stove baked bread, cookies and cakes, roasted meat and fried potatoes and kept the kitchen warm, when the warmth was needed, and when it wasn’t. When the firebox was full of embers and ash, Grandma would jiggle a lever at the back and the ashes would fall into metal box below. The cooled ashes were taken out periodically and thrown on the lawn or garden. When the fire went out overnight, as happened often, Grandma would be up early to get it going again. She had an old can that held corncobs, soaking in some kind of flammable liquid. That and some newspaper would be her firestarters. Soon there would be heat enough to warm the room and begin cooking. I remember looking at and touching a bird wing, kept on the upper warming shelf of the stove. The feathers were spread and it fit neatly into the hand of the person sweeping off the smooth iron cook surface.

Yes, the cook stove was definitely where it began, my affinity with small, useful fire.