From my kitchen table, I watch oak logs shift in the fieldstone fireplace. The valley still holds darkness when I strike the first match. Pine needles catch, then twigs, then curls of birch bark. Steam rises from my coffee mug.
Orange coals breathe beneath the kindling. A line of blue flame runs along bark edges before jumping to solid wood. Heat bends the air above the logs. The room fills with the smell of pine resin and dry oak. Each crack and pop marks wood giving way—grain splitting, moisture escaping, decades of growth consumed in minutes.
This fire burns as fires have always burned. In caves, in lodges, in hearths like mine. The same light that moves across my kitchen walls once lit other faces, other mornings. Through the shimmer of heat above these coals, those mornings feel close—a hand’s reach through smoke.
Outside the window, branches stand bare against gray sky. Frost whitens the grass. Chickadees puff themselves round for warmth. In the woods, deer have grown their winter coats thick and dull.
We stack our wood and tend our fires. Winter mornings demand light and heat, so we feed dry oak to flame and make our own small sun.