Urban Fires

“A Field Guide to Fires” was one of the sections in my altered book from our Lighting the Hearth workshop.  Below is the entry for Urban Fires:

Originating in the late 1980s in the backyard of 944 Wesley Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, these fires were a response to a longing created by summers in the Northwoods and short spells at an Episcopal summer camp near Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  The wood burned here was probaby gleaned from the basement workshop or cobwebbed corners of the garage not once used to house a car.

A small depression was dug in the place where small feet once got a running start for a swing ride. There were no swings here anymore, just an orange steel frame and six young girls singing, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going. That’s how it is with God’s love. Once you’ve experienced it, you want to spread the news, you want to pass it on….”

It wasn’t that any of those girls were particularly religious. They simply could not separate the smell of smoke on their skin, the crisp night, and the feeling of connectedness a fire surely brings from three guitar chords played in honor of the Lord in the wildest place any of them had known at the time.

Advertisement