Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Sunday, September 21, 2025

The Privilege of Fire

Pursed within a natural bowl in the conifer timberlands, our cabin cools quickly after the last light of day dissolves into the long shadows. Waking in the predawn this morning, I started a warming fire to ward off a district chill.

Starting a fire is not an imposition; it is a privilege. I also enjoy the constant challenge of building the perfect kindling stack to grasp the first flame and hand it off to the split rounds needed for righteous heat.

I used paraffin-infused chunks of sawdust to start fires in the woodstove. They are not as greedy as paper. Rather, they hold the flame once ignited, then gradually intensify and feed the kindling.

There is a solid gratification in tending the woodstove in the early morning hours and bringing warmth to the pink, shadowy beginning of a blue-sky day.

A Paraffin Fire Starter

Fire Inside the Stove

—Mitchell Hegman

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