One thing I like to do is make fires. It’s often considered a less socially-acceptable pastime than my other wood-destruction hobbies like writing and woodworking, but each of these ways of killing trees teaches me something vital, and perhaps none is more full of portentous metaphors than building a wood fire in a fireplace or for a campfire.

Here, then, are a few key lessons that may have additional resonance in areas of your life outside of fire-making as well.

The most important ingredient is invisible

It’s very obvious that you need fuel and a spark to start a fire. But the most important enabling aspect is oxygen, and it’s the part you can’t see. So many struggling fires are lacking only oxygen to enable them to become a true conflagration, but people often fall back to reshuffling the things they can see, rather than considering the vital parts that are invisible to them.

It doesn’t take much if everything is at temperature

Again, much preparation involves moving around the components of fire-making, but all of those considerations are far more forgiving if you have fuel that is already near combustion temperature. A 400-degree log is ready to burn even if everything else is only marginal; a freezing-cold log will be recalcitrant even if you’ve arranged everything else perfectly. This is where legacy can be a big factor: it’s a lot easier to start a fire on top of a bed of already-hot coals.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire

Sure, you’ve heard this one before. But have you really thought about why it’s true? What the smoke is telling you is where the air is flowing. And where the air is flowing, the heat is going. The necessary oxygen and heat are following a path, and making the invisible workings of the fire visible to you. It’s a hint about what the fire wants to do next, if you listen to it.

You’re designing an airflow system with fuel attached

This is a conceptual shift from how most people think of fires. Unless you’re only burning a single log, you’re going to be replenishing the source of fuel over the lifespan of the fire. So any individual structure or support won’t persist. But what will stay constant in a well-made fire is the flow of air and heat that make it possible, with additional fuel being added as needed. So, build that flow and then make everything else subordinate to the ongoing combustion.

Each log is a year

Depending on the species, and the dimensions, each log in your fire might represent the equivalent of a full years' growth for that tree. All of its effort to capture the energy of the sun, for the entirety of an orbit around that star, reduced to the fuel in your hand, and gone before your eyes. Maybe that's something to observe, and to practice being grateful for.

Nothing will last

If you’ve done everything perfectly, including setting up a safe space to burn that’s far from any unexpected fuel sources, then the natural course of events is that, left to its own devices, your fire will eventually burn out. It is up to you whether you consider that eventuality a failure or a success.

I hope you stay warm and safe.