Tools, speech, cranial capacity and abstract thought are but four of many characteristics, inventions and capabilities scientists and scholars have touted as the essential, defining distinction between humans and the rest of the creatures that inhabit this planet.
I think it’s fire that defines us.
Granted, we’re not the only species with an ancient and intimate relationship to fire-light and/or fire-warmth. Owls hunt more actively when the moon is full (reflected sun-fire). The golden-haired macaques of Japan have long taken advantage of the Jigokudani hot springs (volcanic fire). A proliferation of rare ocean species cling to the fissures at the bottom of the seas, basking in waters heated by the earth’s molten core. Moths are drawn to flames.
So are humans. We’re pair-bonding, clan-conscious social primates – and I’d be willing to argue that our social consciousness was born in the fire-circle.
The communal fire-pit burned from Olduvai to Heorot; it’s burning still in the heart of the dwindling rain forest, in a lofty Himalayan temple, on the final night of summer camp. The individual hearths that replaced it were the beating heart of the families’ that tended them well into the last century. Individual hearths are still the heart of the home in nations less wealthy, less urban or less industrial than ours. Even after the furnace banished the hearth to the basement, the wood-burning stove held sway. Even after corporate gas and electric sent the stoves to the slag heaps, the fireplace survived as symbol of luxury and opulence for the rich to enjoy at will and display to their guests on grand occasions.
Born in Chicago, a child of the ‘50s, my early experiences with fires were few and far between. There was the Halloween bonfire at Boltwood Park (a tradition that had gone the way of all things by the time I was 7). There was a fireplace in one of the houses we looked at when we were hunting a new place to live. I still remember the reprimand I received as we drove away… I’d been warned to be quiet and not show interest in any of the homes we were viewing, but that house had a fireplace! I couldn’t imagine that my entire family wasn’t as excited and enthusiastic as I was – though, in retrospect, I suppose my dancing around in front of the hearth begging my dad to “Buy it – please can we buy this one?” was a bit over the top. Freshman year of high school I went on an overnight retreat to a dune-y beach. I scorned my tent to sleep outdoors by the fire.
When I was 15-going-on-16, we moved to northern California. Central heating had far less of a hold in the more rustic, more rural, more organic and far more temperate zones of the San Francisco Bay Area. Wall heaters were common; fireplaces were everywhere – including our new house. We were fire-illiterate. Our hearth tending never amounted to more than the occasional Presto-Log set a-light for the pure delight of watching live flames leap.
But my fire-savvy grew. Beyond my new home were my friends’ homes, where fires burned in all winter long. There were homes that were heated entirely by wood-burning stoves. There were camping fires, cookout fires… when I travelled to Ireland I learned to build and tend turf fires, in Wales I made them from coal. By the time I was a grown-up mum, a house without a fireplace wasn’t really home. Our first house-purchase had a fireplace and a wood-burner both, then we dug firepit in the backyard.
We traded that home for this one in 1996. Yes, our 2-story A-frame has central heating, but the central heat doesn’t get upstairs. November to May, we’d freeze at night if not for our black-iron wood-burning stove.
The annual series of chores that lead to my winter fires feed my heart and soul. So I’m grieved, heart and soul, that I can no longer light my fires with impunity. Fact is, fires aren’t green. The particulate matter they generate is a major source of air pollution. I’ve been saying for years we’ll be the last generation to light the home fires. What I haven’t been saying, what I haven’t been wanting to contemplate, is that we’ll be the last generation with a sensory link to the fiery roots of human society. If fire made us human, what will we become when the fire-circle is broken?