To build the perfect fire, start with dry kindling, seasoned wood and crumpled pages of The New York Times. Photo from blogs.smarter.com
This should actually be called "One Man's Recipe for the Perfecto Fire," since we are trying to convince B to stop saying "purrrrfect" 117 times a day.
Anyway, here is the full text of his essay, which was excerpted in my last post. He reveals the secrets of constructing and lighting a great fire. I particularly like his notion that modern fires should be "completely useless"--there for pleasure rather than anything basic like actually heating your house.
Oh, and if you like this, take a look at his thoughtful letter on The Forest Primeval, which appears, as do all his letters, wild ideas and "bests" of the week, on The Global Province.
"I’ve been at this firebuilding thing for 40 years, mostly dealing with shallow, poorly designed fireplaces that are the burden of modern man. I am sure that hunters and gatherers 1,000 years ago would have given up chasing birds and antelopes if, at the end of a hard day’s hunting, they had had to reckon with these odd little boxes developers dare to call fireplaces.
"The only fireplace worth its name was a walk-in fireplace we used on week ends in the Garden State. It was so mighty that the fire would heat up three rooms on the first floor, and the mutton chops we prepared there were grizzled to perfection and the vegetable stew we cooked in a pot hanging from the ironwork did justice to the greens harvested from the farm garden.
"In our modern world there’s really no point in having a fire. In fact, some politically correct types, in a recent article in The New York Times, railed against the pollution, the waste of greenery, and the several other sins that ensue from stoking up a fire in one’s Manhattan apartment. Naturally, while in Manhattan, we had two fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the main bedroom. It’s a wonder we did not expire from those sweet fumes.
"Of course, Charles Lamb uncovered the only rationale for wood fires that we have ever come across. In his “A Dissertation on Roast Pig,” he found that Chinese peasants of old, quite by accident, discovered that the pigs that had been running free in their quaint shelters were simply superlative tasting when they accidentally burnt their houses. A rash of such burnings then ensued and waistlines swelled. He could just as well have done an essay on roast lamb, but he might have felt that this struck too close to home. We ourselves laid steaks right on the logs at our quarters in the university, all of which we washed down with ample quantities of booze.
"Modern fires should be strictly useless, however. That makes us chide owners of wood stoves and the like who want their fires to serve some purpose. Worse yet are those who have fake fires with specious logs that actually take their flame from gas jets hidden under the logs. They look ghastly. And the whole point of fires are to have something wonderful to look at in the dark of a winter night while cold blasts scurry around the outside of the house and the victrola (or stereo if you must) plays “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
"To make a fire then, you want a stack of wood that’s no longer green, hopefully sitting in the back yard or shed for a year. If outside, cover it with a tarp, so that the rains can’t reach it, and it is truly dry when you set to fire-making. The key is kindling. If you love trees and greenery, you can gather bark and twigs and falling branches, putting the potpourri in a bucket that will sit under the same tarpaulin that covers your pile of logs. Some will buy some fatwood as a starter: it is fun and creates a little bit of action, but it is rather unnecessary.
"Finally, you need a good pile of newspapers. We favor The New York Times (and we are asking for a commission for this free advertisement). It burns well and does not use the slick papers which may line your chimney with excrescences. Besides you should buy The Times everyday anyway since it is probably the only English language newspaper in the world worth its salt anymore, now that the UK papers have gone down the tubes. What you do is to ball up tightly one sheet and then loosely wrap another sheet around the hard ball. This means the assemblage will burn for a while in your fireplace.
"First place several of the loose paper assemblages between the andirons in your fireplace. Atop this put mounds of kindling. Then put exactly one log to the front of your andirons, using it to anchor in the paper and the kindling. Once done, light a swatch of paper and use it to heat the air well above the andirons towards the chimney. This last move will make sure smoke from the fire goes up your chimney instead of flowing into your open room. At this point you are ready to light the paper balls and watch the kindling burst into flame and torch up the fireplace.
"In a few minutes throw a few more sticks of kindling on the fireplace, so that it reaches full heat. In perhaps 10 minutes you can put a log or two more on your roaring fire.
"If it all does not work out well, consult your mother-in-law. Most likely she either built the fires or supervised minions (family members) at her own homestead years ago.
"Footnote: There are all sorts of recipes for firebuilding on the web. Take your pick. I mean to get into how one should make a fire in a Rumford Fireplace. We don’t intend to have a Rumford, but I am fascinated by its inventor-–Benjamin Thompson aka Count Rumford. He was a brilliant inventor, statesman, scholar, and everything else. But as life would have it, he was a Tory so he left for Europe when things got too hot for Loyalists in the United States during the Revolution. He had an amazing career. We’ve been to his digs in Woburn, Massachusetts but must return for a closer inspection."
