Ashes

Photo courtesy Flickr

Out of consideration for my many neighbors’ lungs, I’ve cut way back on the amount of wood smoke I generate. The French parlor stove left after the fourth Christmas in a row with a burn ban. On a city lot, we’re self-sufficient in barbeque wood, and the only open flame I see from one month to the next is that of a well-secured tea light.

Sometimes I wonder if the creeping combination of consumer safety, environmental, and homeland security concerns are on the verge of creating a culture in which human beings will be denied the use of fire. It has long been true for most people that the only real need for fire is to light their cigarettes.

The design and services that make contemporary life so convenient also de-skill, and as elders pass on, the living memory of basic processes passes with them. The deep wisdom of millennia evaporates without our even knowing it’s gone.

New Year’s Eve’s neighborhood celebration was diminished by a national news story about a couple who had lost their elders and their children in a fire. The father of the family had cleaned fire place ashes into a paper bag and set it somewhere that allowed the house to ignite, not so difficult now that many furnishings are made of oil. His was not a stupid move: it was an ignorant one. Society has an obligation to train each person in the effective management of fire just as it trains in computer skills.

Before smoking was banned in offices, all wastebaskets were made of metal: the risk of fire was common knowledge. Galvanized metal garbage cans with lids were called “ash cans” for good reason. Anything that held ashes from any source was fireproof, and it was unheard of for ashes to go into other than a dedicated receptacle.

There’s dignity to managing a hearth, and the old rhythms of the housekeeper center on keeping it tuned and decent so that it will warm and feed the family. At bedtime, the fire was “banked”, or covered with ashes so that it could be revived in the morning. A healthy bed of ashes is an asset, allowing one to direct and modify the burning patterns of the fuel. A sweet-burning wood fire is a great privilege, and the time and attention it takes to manage one charts the passage both of the day and of the yearly cycle of harvesting fuel. Now, a fire is a leisure luxury, but it used to be that tending the fire was a welcome micro-break that cleared the mind of the task at hand and refreshed one’s train of thought.

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