I’ve got a new essay over at the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer on the deep roots of our love of fire:

In the early 1980s, I was camping in the bluffs of southeastern Minnesota with a group of boys and our fathers. I was an early riser, and when I got outside, it was cold. A few other boys were up, and we could see our breath. We could also see wisps of smoke coming from last night’s fire pit. 

We immediately got to work, putting twigs, then branches, then logs on the coals. We blew and watched the fire catch. As it grew, it felt like magic. We, in turn, felt like grown men who had found some hidden power. Which, of course, we had, because fire is not like magic. It is magic. It’s a change in the state of matter. To watch a fire is to watch something solid become heat and light and smoke. To watch a fire is to watch a once-living thing vanish into the air.

When I think of camping, I think of campfires. Stoves are great and fire bans are sometimes necessary. But there is something essential about fire. In The Singing Wilderness Sigurd Olson wrote: “Something happens to a man when he sits before a fire. Strange stirrings take place within him, and a light comes into his eyes which was not there before. An open flame suddenly changes his environment to one of adventure and romance.”

Read the rest here.