A Six Arrows Farm Update

I love fires.  Ultimately, I would not be a true daughter of my father if I didn't.  Family tradition here includes spring cleaning in the woods.  The first day of brush-burning is more a celebration than anything else...the reveling in good hard work. I realize the nature of the "warm fuzzies" that most people get when they think of big heaps of flaming brush probably has very little to do with sentiment and a great deal to do with the physical heat.  Nevertheless, most of us around here get a little thrill at the thought of burning something…within reasonable and “legal” boundaries of course.  That is the somewhat nostalgic and practically maudlin side of the question for me.  Feelings aside, fire does hold some charm for me unrelated to family tradition.  In fact, this sentimental view of fire grew in part out of a love for the very essential and economical side of burning things.  But I digress…

When Daddy announces spring cleaning in the woods, nobody has to think or plan much.  The dispersal of forces is almost wordless.  Out come work clothes with their familiar stains and tears, last year’s smoky, earthy scents still hanging about them and a bit of last year’s dead leaf or bent twig clinging to a sleeve.  Heavy boots swallow your legs up to the knee and an old hat or scarf settles with its own angle like a habit on your head.  Ever heard “That fits you like a glove?”  Well, somewhere in a motley heap of leather gloves are the two that, with long use, really do fit the shape of your hand almost like your own skin and testify to our common aphorism.  And just in case you were wondering…there really is no hand in my glove pictured on the left; complete with grass and bark and mud stains.

It doesn’t take long for us to settle into a job vigorously once we decide what it’s to be.  The voracious roar of a saw tends to be the cue and almost at once someone is dragging out dead kindling while another hacks at thorns.  Dust and chips fly about and a silent curtain of smoke rises up from the crackle and blaze of a strategically built inferno.  We were all raised to be unabashed “pyro’s”, but watching us for just ten minutes will reveal a broad range of styles.  Nourishing it like a famished creature, we douse it with great armloads of sticks, add a steady train of skillfully tossed logs, and patiently feed in gangly branches.

There is always another limb to drag, another tree to saw, another pile to rake, but if all else fails, each of us has cultivated the skill of “poking.”  I don’t know of another family that relishes sitting beside a fire and poking at it more than ours.  That bough needs to be shoved further in, this branch is sticking out, that flame is dying down.  A skillful prod here and jab there will make an unsightly mountain melt away to feather-light deserts of ash. Red and hungry, grasping and swallowing, glowing and shimmering, this thing of terror and glory lives for a flashing moment of transformation and then dies away to nothing along with all that is left of its food.  

Most people don’t fully appreciate a good fire.  But then most haven’t heard of “killer vines”, “buckthorn”,  or “stinging nettles”…unless of course you have lived out here for a while.  The terrifying rush of heat and devastating path of destruction that are so often associated with fire can almost eclipse the cleansing and rejuvenating influence it has on creation.  Death again and again gives birth to life.  On this theme every day the whole of creation is whispering and shouting over and over until the one who listens can’t help but take notice.

So I am officially taking note…and signing off for now.