One Friday, in early November, I was in eastern Long Island for the night, sitting beside some of my closest friends in front of a fire I had put together; simply enjoying the silence among us as we gazed at the dancing flames. Around two o’clock in the morning, after tending to the fire for a few hours, it dawned on me that despite my undying love for fire, I have never really written anything about it exclusively…unless you count Candlelight…

If you played a part in my childhood, you already know that I was a little bit of a “pyromaniac” and some of the most memorable and exciting moments in my life involve fire or variations of it. I still vividly remember the first time I saw gun powder in action – at the age of seven – as my older cousin blew up a bottle of Bubble Jug in my back yard. By the age of ten I had learned that there were a number of household chemicals that are highly combustive and when used in a certain manner could yield someone…a flamethrower.

My uncle always reminds me that I was the only child he’d ever met that used the word “accelerant” when he was looking for some assistance to start a fire. To this day, I remember the pride I felt as a twelve year old cub scout when my cousin and I were the only scouts in our “Firem’n Chit” class to conquer the challenge of building a fire using nothing more than two matches (the “instructors” probably used over thirty and a quarter bottle of lighter fluid). In my Junior year of high school, during English class, we took a written assessment that told us which jobs we would excel at most and among the fifty-plus results we each received, nothing was able to surpass the level of excitement I felt as I read the words “bomb technician” on the list. I was astonished; partially because I couldn’t believe it was actually a viable result on a high school career assessment and also in part because it was something I’d always “dabbled in” as an adolescent. By the age of twenty I was planning, organizing, and executing firework shows in Eastern Long Island for my family during 4th of July weekend and sometimes the weekends of Labor day and Memorial Day (permissible by budget).

Today, I don’t partake in any of the above activities, but still indulge in the occasional campfire when the opportunity presents itself, as it did on that warm Friday in November, when I built one of the most beautiful fires I had ever built in my life. It was a fire that stayed with me long after I left its presence; it’s heat still on my face hours later. I can feel it’s warmth on me now as I write this very note.

“Feeding a fire is a huge responsibility” my uncle told us as he sat in the row of people to the left of me in front of the fire (he was talking to the rest of the group). “I’ve seen a lot of fires in my lifetime and this might be one of the best ones in the past five years I’d say” he addressed to me. I agreed with him. Not only in the sense that this was a great fire, but the fact that tending to a fire is a great responsibility. A fire isn’t just a pile of hot burning wood, it is an entity that encompasses most of the characteristics of living things and is anything but lifeless. Fires, like humans, need oxygen and food in order to survive. They are hugely temperamental and can go from tamed domestic pet to wild ferocious animal in the blink of an eye. Fires can create energy for cities and promote life, but they can also burn everything down and reduce an entire population to ashes.

Shortly after we arrived I snuck out of the house while all the guys were busy catching up on things and setting up all the essentials (beers, burgers, and the like) and walked over to the fire pit to clean it out and make sure that it was ready for me to start building the foundation of my fire (1). I wanted to do it alone; setting up a fire is therapeutic for me. I forget about everything and simply focus on the task at hand. I put a lot of attention into it because it is a selfless task. A fire brings people together and provides warmth, it’s not something you do for yourself 99% of the time.

Then I proceeded to collect a variety of wood that consisted of tinder, kindling, and fuel (2). Tinder would be your smallest pieces of wood, think twigs, brush, and small branches. Much like the popular and superficial dating app, tinder burns hot and fast and is virtually incapable of building a sustainable fire; you use it only as a starter. Kindling consists of thicker branches usually one-to-two inches in diameter which can be used to support your fire and upon strategic placement can move burning fire to a neglected area. If fire was a relationship, kindling would be the flowers-for-no-reason, a home-cooked candlelit dinner, or a spontaneous weekend getaway; kindling feeds the fire and keeps it going. Finally, you need fuel. Fuel are the fat logs or split pieces of wood you think of when you imagine a fire. They are the foundation and structure of a fire, they will burn long after your kindling and tinder do. Fuel is added relatively infrequently compared to the other woods, but it burns the longest and provides the most sustainability. Fuel, in some ways, is a mile stone; your fire needs to be ready for it. Too much, too soon will only drown your fire and prevent oxygen from flowing through it. You need a combination of all three types of wood in order to create a good fire.

After gathering some wood myself, my friends discovered that I was outside and came to help, beers in hand. Despite my inital plan to do it alone, it is always nice when you have the support of a few of your best friends behind you. Two of the guys gathered more wood and neatly piled it off to the side; a safe distance from the fire (3). My uncle ran off to the garage on a quest for some…”accelerant” (4). Someone else set up the hose and a bucket of water for added safety precaution (5) and I started building my fire (6). Everyone has their own way of doing it and my uncle and I briefly debated the topic, but since I took the initiative on this, we were doing it my way. I took my time constructing it, all while hearing the guys complain about how long it was taking me (precisely why I do it alone), and my uncle anxiously waiting for me to finish so he could douse it in gasoline…..not quite the “accelerant” we were expecting but it worked….to each their own.

It is funny how much you can decipher about a person’s character by the way that they build a fire. Some people enjoy watching a fire blaze and roar so hot and high that it fills their eyes with light and blasts their bodies with heat; but those fires tend to be short lived and you’ll waste a ton of resources in an effort to sustain them. After the blaze is gone, you will feel even colder than you did before. Some people enjoy hovering around the embers of a dormant fire because it still provides all the heat one needs without the risk and uncertainty of dancing flames. You can get much closer to a cluster of embers than you can a blazing fire. Despite all the different preferences for forms of fire, a true master fire builder has one goal and it is neither blaze nor ember, it is longevity. Building a great fire that lasts is far more fulfilling than any hot blaze or sleeping ember. Anyone can throw leaves or gasoline into a fire and watch them burn, but it takes a lot of skill, persistence, patience, and responsibility to build and tend to a fire that provides lasting warmth.

Within a short few minutes we were all sitting in front of the fire, telling stories, drinking beers, listening to music, and forgetting about everything else in existence. It was an opportunity for all of us to bond and unwind after a long week. I frequently got up to feed the fire or move a few logs around in order to get more oxygen running through it so it could burn better and it almost felt like I was dancing with it. Winds change, wood crackles and falls, and fire is always moving; it can be very temperamental but as long as you understand the basic principles of managing a fire, it will never get out of control. I knew it was a great fire from the moment I caught myself staring directly into the center of it for twenty minutes in pure silence but that is not why I knew it was a great fire; it was because all of the other hadn’t said a word in twenty minutes either. We were all lost in our minds, staring at the dancing flames, dreaming our own dreams, and all I could think of as I stared deep into the heart of this fire was how many lessons fire has actually taught me. I looked down to see that it was a little past 2:00 AM and it was then that I decided my next blog post would be about the art of building a fire. I stood up to go and tend to the fire some more and the guys started talking again. As I turned to walk back to my seat and sit back down I heard my uncle say to me “I’ve seen a lot of fires in my lifetime and this might be one of the best ones in the past five years I’d say.” The man is a few years my senior, and I’m sure he’s seen some great fires, but this fire, on that November night, was my Olympic flame and Zeus himself couldn’t take it from me.

Maybe this isn’t all about building a fire and it is about sustaining passion in one’s life or nurturing relationships. Maybe playing with fire all my life wasn’t such a bad thing as it taught me many lessons despite the occasional burn or two. Maybe this has to do with everyone’s fire, whether it is intrinsic, extrinsic, or physically right in front of them. Maybe I didn’t just light one fire that day. Despite all of this hypothetical speculation, fire, no matter where it physically or metaphorically resides, can only be sustained for the long term using the simple principles above. Even if a fire has been reduced to its embers, it can still be reignited with a little bit of patience, persistence, and effort but if you wait too long and it burns out, you’ll be left with petrified wood that can never be reignited and the only hope is that you place it somewhere safe and a tree will someday grow in its place.