A Self-Starting Fire

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been starting fires in the woodstove early in the morning and keeping them going until midday. Then, in the early evening, I have been sweeping the blackened and (theoretically) cool remaining chunks of blackened wood to the back of the stove and loading new wood in the firebox for lighting the following morning.

Last night, nearly three hours after I loaded the stove for the morning, as Desiree and I sat on the sofa, she asked, “Did you start a fire?”

“Nope. I will tomorrow.”

I followed her gaze toward the woodstove twenty-some feet to my right. After only a second or two, I saw an orange flame curtsy forth and then withdraw again. A quick dash to the stove revealed that flames at the back of the firebox were actively scissoring at the lengths of wood I’d stacked together.

A fire had started itself.

Above all, this is a cautionary tale. Consider the Bucksnort Fire of the year 2000. That wildfire, started by charcoal thought to be burned out and tossed onto the ground, escalated into a conflagration that swept through 9,500 acres only ten miles or so from my house as the crow flies. This is dry country. The fuels are dry. Fire will claw its way back from winking coals if given any chance. Even in a woodstove, attentiveness is advised.

The Self-Starting Fire

—Mitchell Hegman