Fire from twigs still serves purpose

Last week’s gusty winds brought twigs and small limbs down into our front yard.
Mostly they were the brittle, dead branches of redbud trees. The sight of them this time of year is nothing unusual, but the wind had given us a larger harvest of kindling than usual.
So on Sunday, after putting the job off for a couple of days, I finally decided to clean things up.
The wind was still at it about noon that day, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if more branches came down while I worked. It was, I admit, an odd time for yard work. The mercury was heading down from the 20s, and the wind chill was lower than I wanted to think about.
Just the same, there was something satisfying about getting the blood moving through the veins, bending, stooping, gathering sticks up by the handful and taking them to the back patio.
The NFL could wait, I figured. There was plenty of time for football and the couch.
As I worked, I found myself thinking about how pioneer and Native American families braved winters like this 200 and more years ago. Those sticks I was gathering weren’t an eyesore to them; they were fuel.
Gathered up, that kindling would go into the campfire or fireplace or wood stove and unleash the heat within. It was as if the sun that had shone on the trees had been captured and stored just for such an occasion so that it could be reborn as a warming blaze.
My task was more vanity than necessity. I didn’t want our property to look as if we’d abandoned it. A certain amount of pride was involved.
And when I took three or four loads of sticks and twigs to the back of the house, and when I broke those sticks into manageable bits and tossed them in the firepit, I was struck by the difference between my task and that of my forebears.
After all, as I broke sticks over my knee or used pruning loppers to cut the larger pieces up, what I was doing was piling up fuel for a backyard fire that would be lit solely for our amusement some evening in springtime.
The heat given off wouldn’t be a matter of life and death. It would simply disappear into the air. The light given off wouldn’t be utilitarian. It would simply be decorative, something pretty and welcoming.
Those earlier fallen branches and those earlier fires had meaning, and the sunlight released by them mattered.
These twigs in my hands and the fire they would kindle seemed to me to matter less, knowing as I did that I would shortly go into the house where the thermostat was set at a comfortable level and a kettle could be brought to a boil with the turn of a knob on the stove.
And yet, I told myself, maybe if there are family and friends around the firepit when the kindling is lit, maybe that’s enough.
Maybe when the sunlight in the wood is released simply to delight the eye and warm the heart, maybe that’s enough.
There’s a poem in there somewhere, I told myself as I went inside to get warm.
Or maybe a column.