You have probably figured out by now that I love fire. It is warm, crackly, predictably unpredictable, and I can stare at it for hours. I’m not sure if everyone feels that way or if it is just me. The best camping trips are even better with a campfire, and backpacking can feel like something is missing if you aren’t allowed to have a little fire and weather is right. When I was a kid it wasn’t any different except that we didn’t have a fireplace or go camping. Okay, it had nothing to do with camping, we just set stuff on fire because we really liked watching things burn. Our parents didn’t smoke, so it was not easy to come across things to start fires, but we did occasionally find books of paper matches with one or two remaining or a lighter that was not quite empty.

We spent a lot of time looking for things to burn or explode. The normal thing we found were Black Cat firecrackers. Sometimes the fuse goes out before they explode, so if we found one it usually meant there was only a tiny bit of fuse left, and it was usually wet or somehow damaged which is why it didn’t keep burning in the first place. We would find somewhere to wedge the firecracker so it would stand up and then one of us would try to light the fuse. See where this is going? Yeah. Almost all of them blow up on whoever was trying to light it, but the *bang* was cool and our fingers stopped stinging from the explosion pretty quick and we were ready to find more!

Other things also burn. Things like garbage dumpsters, or maybe parks. I don’t remember much about the dumpster, but Brad remembers. The dumpster at the apartments we lived at caught on fire, but Brad isn’t sure if we did it or if we just happened to see it. I do remember the park though! We found a full pack of matches one day. What do you do when you find matches? Look for things to set on fire! There were 3 of us, I think. On the far side of the park by the chain link fence that went to the dirt lot, then river, bridge, and school was some long, uncut grasses. We found a spot where the tree roots circled around a bunch of grasses that looked perfect. I think our friend tried to light it a few times, but the match kept going out before anything caught because of the breeze. I got impatient and took the book of matches and told them, “This is how it’s done,” and proceeded to light the entire book and throw it into the grass before the sulfur stopped flaming. Someone was telling me I was stupid for wasting the whole book of matches, but the grass approved of my matchbook sacrifice and caught fire!

We have been camping a few times so you might notice that we ring our fires with rocks. You might also know that ringing a fire with wood is probably a bad idea because wood is pretty burny. I didn’t think about that at that age (maybe 6?), so we watched the grass burn, and then the wood around it caught fire, and then the tree, and then more grass, I went from thinking, “Fire is so cool,” to thinking, “Ruh roh, Raggy!” We panicked.

We first thought about running to tell an adult, but then realized we would be in Big Trouble. Then we talked about getting water from the river to pour on it, but we didn’t have anything to carry the water in. Our next best idea was to run over to the dirt lot, grab some dirt, and dump it on the fire. The problem with that was that we still didn’t have anything to carry the dirt in, but we had no other ideas left so we went with it. We ran over, grabbed 2 handfuls of dirt, and ran back to throw it on the fire. 6 little hands weren’t enough to do anything to the blaze, so after a few runs back and forth we did the next best thing possible: run away! We ran home since burning up the park seemed like a pretty big deal and getting caught seemed like an equally big deal.

The fire trucks came. Firemen are exciting creatures for children (especially children that like fire), and fires are always cool. We figured that since we were coming from the house we would just be considered spectators, not psychopathic arsons, so we went to watch what the firemen were doing. They put the fire out and asked us if we knew anything about what happened. We told them we didn’t, and I bet we looked as guilty as possible while we did it. Surprisingly, they said nothing and eventually left. While walking through the charred earth (they told us to stay out of the area because it was still hot, but we never really listen), I saw something shine. It was metal. I went over and found a little metal firetruck! It burnt my hand a bit when I picked it up, but it was awesome. I’m pretty sure that was God saying, “Dude, that was a hella cool fire. Just maybe don’t do it again.”

Love,
Fazia