Fire lights...

“Wood can be used to build a fire; 

only a match can bring it to life.”

— Anonymous

It has been many moons since sitting in front of a roaring fire in the early morning hours. Little is more compelling than imagination-stirring shadows, created from its flames, dancing on the walls – the snap, crackle, and pop of burning wood and slightly smoky odor adding to the aura.

When the earth has rotated away from the sun, there is magic in a darkened room illuminated by fire. This day, the fire wasn’t roaring, nor was there the smell of burning wood, that is until I closed my eyes and drifted into the secret places of my mind.

He loved to cut…

It was Monday and his day off. As long as I knew the man, this was his day of rest. In warm weather, he could often be found in a narrow-shouldered undershirt, beads of sweat dripping from his body as he cut wood. He was a complicated man who worked in a complicated and unpredictable profession.  But on his day off when he could reduce medium-sized tree trunks with his single-handle cross-cut saw and split the resulting blocks into firewood, he was in a different and simplified world. The man was my father.

In the years I knew him, he – we – lived in many places. My first recollection him was in Burnhamthorpe, Ontario where he pastored a small country church, The building had no running water so, in moments of need, a two-seater outhouse served the congregation summer and winter.

The parsonage was just across the road. The house had a fireplace.  

I am not sure 'when' the love of wood burning came to my father. He was a city man. But it is my guess ‘the where’ occurred from spending part of his summers buried in the woods, on the shore of Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada. Mother’s people had a sizable piece of land there and a family cottage that was parsed out to family members during different weeks of the summer. Their union made those summers possible.

The cottage wasn’t large but consisted of a rustic open-raftered room separated from the kitchen by a long wooden countertop. The cooking area had hinged windows that swung inward. On warm summer days, they would be pulled open and held in place by rafter hooks allowing in cool breezes from the lake. 

On the lakeside, a veranda ran the length of the cottage. It was a great place to sit and drink in the quiet solitude of pine-scented air combined with the sound of gently lapping of water along the shoreline. 

The centerpiece of the larger room of the cottage was an open-hearth fireplace. Old wicker cushioned chairs sat in a semi-circle in front of it. I cannot remember an evening when large wood-burning fires did not warm the cottage nor mornings when they did not take away the chill of the night. 

Most evenings were spent chatting around or merely gazing at the fire until the last embers lost their color and heat. The crispness of the air and the smell of crackling wood was otherworldly. Many a love was kindled sitting before that fireplace in those wonderfully magic woods. 

Great fires weren't limited to the cottage. Wieners cooked with broken tree branches, marshmallow, marshmallow smores, and corn roasts were, for many years part of our summer holiday tradition. There are few things more energizing and soothing than an outdoor fire, cooking, singing and sharing with people you love.

As the years passed, my father built a separate cottage for our family, its centerpiece a hand-built stone fireplace. He gathered granite rocks, residue from dynamite blasting that opened roads in the region. Many a trunk load of rock was transported to the back of the cottage where, with a hammer and chisel, he fashioned each stone to be lovingly placed into that hearth.

My dad loved to cut that wood and build those fires. And because of him, in subsequent years, so did his son.

He taught me how to fell a tree safely to a specific spot.  He taught me how to cut logs into the appropriate lengths and how to ‘…let the ax do the work…' when splitting wood.  He taught me how to carry and stack the pieces when they were cut. These are simple things and seem self-evident, but when he worked, he was lost...meditative…spiritual…zen. His body worked the wood, but he was not really there. The fires were the reward, the moments of quiet meditation and rest.

I learned to love cutting wood.  But watching and listening to him, I began to understand it was never the harvesting of the tree, it was the loss of one's self in the work. The tree? Simply the vehicle.

The years passed, and in the natural evolution of time, the number of visits home diminished. We still had cottage time together, but eventually, even that slipped away. As dad aged, he no longer had the energy or strength to cut wood. At his home, parishioners brought and stacked it for him, but in the end, it became too difficult for him to even carry it to the fireplace - the grates cold and empty.

Early morning hours…

Molly and I have been married for forty years, and during that time we have never had a fireplace in any of our homes – until now. The place had a fireplace with wood burning potential but a gas line and artificial logs were in place.

Recently, we made the decision to activate the fireplace. Feeling that storing, carrying wood was more than we wanted to do, we opted for the gas and replaced the ceramic logs with a different material that better radiated heat.

A few things are missing, most notably the pleasant smell of burning wood and enchanting crackle that comes with it. But, the look of the flames and heat it throws are comforting. It is a little strange that the logs look the same when the fire is lit and when it is extinguished. But staring into the fire in a quiet, darkened room and slipping into the solitude of my mind, brings a sense of peace and continuity to my soul.

This morning, as has been the case since activating fireplace, "...I closed my eyes and drifted into the secret places of my mind..." 

This morning, I found my dad chopping wood.

-ted