Hearth

The sun catches in the tree line that runs along the trail corridor over the flats below the Bloomfield ridge. Smoke from a distant fire plays in the scarlet light that rests in the willows of late afternoon. Reminiscent of the steam train era, telephone poles weary with time, swagger down the line. It is October and now as the dew of morning lies heavy, the concept of fire takes on renewed relevance— perhaps a notion enscribed into our primal memories—our psyches, our genes. It has to do with the meaning of the hearth and shelter I figure.

According to Greek mythology, Prometheus rose to heaven and lit a torch at the chariot of the sun and brought fire down to us. With fire we could make weapons to subdue other animals, tools to cultivate the earth, to keep us warm and finally, to introduce the arts and coin money, the means of trade and commerce. Prometheus and Hermes were considered trickster gods. Both have a claim to the gift of fire. Hermes is credited with discovering how to produce it. The mythology from thence forth was that whenever we sacrificed to the gods we would be able to feast on the meat, provided we burned the bones as an offering.

The earliest evidence of controlled use of fire for domestic use by humans was found in a site in Israel that dates back 790,000 years ago. Charred wood and seeds have been recovered in other sites dating to about 400,000 years ago which points to the belief that earlier sites were likely an opportunistic use of random fires. Evidence of the domestic fire helps trace the evolution of humans. Not surprising is a basic principle that when we began to reside in seasonally and permanently cool places, fire became more important for all of us: heat, light, fire to cook plants and meat, to clear forests for planting, to firetreat stones for making tools.

The concept of the hearth in its most basic form—a collection of stones to contain the fire and to allow the ash to act as hearth—dates to 125,000 years ago. Hearths have been found in the river caves of South Africa. The hearth evolved into the earth-oven, essentially a hearth banked and sometimes domed, built of clay for cooking and heating. We learned to fire clay pots and art pieces in the earth-oven. Where wood was scarce and needed for timber, furnishings and tools, alternative fuels – peat, cut turf, animal dung or bone, seaweed and straw were burned.

While fire is a mixture of hot gases, flames are the result of a chemical reaction primarily between oxygen in air and a fuel such as wood or propane. First there was the rubbing of sticks to ignite the flame, then the discovery of flint made it easier, but by the 1600’s the alchemist Henning Brand, also known as Dr. Teutonics, in his quest to turn base metals into gold, boiled up a batch of urine and after distilling it managed to isolate the first element—phosphorus— that when drawn against a splinter of sulphur-coated wood, burst into flame. When Joshua Pusey commercialized the process and began to use white phosphorus to eliminate the odour, the highly toxic properties of the substance sparked (no pun intended) a world ban on the use of it. Gotta love those alchemists.

Two hundred years later Sam Jones was producing ‘Lucifers’ the genesis of the non-poisonous wooden match of today. Today over 500 billion matches are used annually in the U.S. alone.

And so the crows are now noisy in the branches, something to do about a stranger in their midst and their duty to tell everyone about it. The setting sun is enveloped in a blanket of smoke resembling the setup of the hearth itself. The floor of the trail is now the place of warmth, the ‘heat of the earth’. As I think about it, the hearth is universal as a symbol of the centre of the home around the globe. And as the leaves begin to change and we look to our places of shelter maybe the alchemists, our primal ancestors, maybe even the tricksters Prometheus and Hermes ought to be given a nod for keeping the home fires burning, the hearth as centre of home over the millennia.