There is, to me, no house so cold as one that needs no fireplace. The building and tending of fire has become for me such a primal instinct as to leave me feeling incomplete when it is not needed. In my unapologetic opinion, one might as well build a house without inhabitants in mind as to build one without a fireplace in mind.
This fireplace is all I need. And a dog.
This fireplace and this dog is all I need.
Then the family and I can move in and feel at home with our fireplace and our dog and our cat.
And some computers, of course. And coat hangers.
But I digress.
I don’t know what it is about fire, but it is something. Something palpable, both when it is present, and somehow when it is absent.
I don’t know if I’m built this way by nature, or if I adopted the love of fire somewhere along the way. I got my first fireplace when I was 11. (It came with the house.) I felt as if Dad and I were in a Grizzly Adams adventure to be cutting and splitting firewood for those three chilly nights we had each year in Florida. And then there were the camping trips with Uncle Bill, and later with Cousin Chris, where we’d sit for hours staring into the campfire and pondering the Universe. Fire is good for ponderers.
However it happened, fire became my friend. Perhaps it is merely by association with good times and good people that I am fond of it. Or perhaps it’s something even deeper.
Regardless, here I sit at the first hints of the Fall chill, missing what has somehow become a part of me.
