On reckless beginnings, creative dormancy, and the forest finally tall enough to sustain flame.
Setting fires as a means of controlling them. Is art the ultimate expression of a controlled burn?
As a parent, I’m horrified by the memory of myself and two friends — clearly not nearly supervised enough — deciding to build an epic fire. We were at my uncle’s cottage. In retrospect, perhaps this explains why it was the one and only time we were invited.
I remember felling small trees and dragging them back to the site of our creation. I remember flames at least four feet high. This might be an exaggeration. I remember the amusement we took in watching my father and his brother scramble to extinguish what we had made.
The next day, we lit it again. From the remains.
Even a few weeks ago, in this absurdly cold winter, I dragged what amounted to an entire season’s worth of firewood to the pit while my dog romped with her bestie. I shirked walking duty for something far more satisfying — and considerably less likely to burn the entire Haliburton forest down.
As a young adult, intoxicated by mortgages and tax returns and the satisfying gravity of being taken seriously, I dismissed my writing as a childish indulgence. I decided the gap meant I didn’t have it in me. The forest was still growing. Like a stand too young to carry a blaze, I didn’t yet have the material to sustain the scale of fire I wanted to set.
The forest is tall enough now.