I have a happy relationship with fire.  Fire has always been good and well-behaved with me.  Never has it gotten out of control and done bad things to me or those close to me.  Instead, it has always been a companion and a helper.  Fire is my friend.

Fire has been nearby during life’s happiest moments.  When I was small, the sound of a wooden match struck meant my Dad was kneeling before the fireplace, setting the stage for a holiday celebration, or just a close, quiet family evening.  As a teenager at summer camp, I learned that bonfires are a leading cause of group singing.  And on beaches around the world, a driftwood fire will spark and enflame romance, offering a light from which couples will withdraw quietly as their own heat becomes stoked.

There are many fine things about living in the country.  Nature is fact, not theory.  The weather is always the news.  The elements hold sway as they never can in the city.  Life will move a little slower in the rural, if you give it half a chance.  Better still, in the country it’s easier to remember that we didn’t invent the world in the last century, or the last five minutes.  It’s old out here.

An abiding joy of country life is the ability to burn my own forest, one small piece at a time.  Our parcel of land is handsomely treed.  A few acres of maple and ash, poplar and oak and beech.  And the forest feeds my friendship with fire.  The forest provides, and I accept its offerings with gratitude.

Every year brings some big storms.  Every year brings new fuel.  Sometimes we can hear the shock and crash as a big tree comes down.  These days, I’m feeding the fire with the bounty of an 80-foot hickory that blocked the end of our driveway during a tempest last summer.  In the most literal and oldest sense, it was a “windfall” profit.  We hired some help to saw it up.  Our family invested sweat and slivered hands to stack it in the woodshed.

Now each night I’m privileged with crisp air, warm muscles in back and shoulders, and the excellent, satisfying thwack of my axe through hard wood.  Later, the kindling will crackle and pop before the bigger pieces join the blaze.  Always, people will gather.  Sometimes it’s my family, with small children admonished to keep a smart distance.  Sometimes it’s friends, whom the fire makes relaxed and loquacious.  And sometimes it’s my wife and I, colouring our private moments with the glow.

The Latin for “hearth” is focus.  How perfect.  The fireplace or fire pit has always been the central point of a home or a gathering or a tribe.  The fire brings people together, draws us to its light and heat.  It speaks to us in reassuring sounds and talks of safety and sufficiency.  And rightness.

It feels very right to burn my forest as it offers itself to me.  Each night, a small pyre transforms the fallen, and sends it to the heavens with my respects and thanks.

Cam Battley lives quietly in rural Ontario, Canada.