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.

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 Years worth of bank statements, old tax returns, outdated warranties and instructions for things we no longer owned, and more – it all had to be destroyed and paying to have it shredded was not an option.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.

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.