I'm quite often fired up with some new enthusiasm, but my love for fire is more to do with the comfort of it. Fires on the beach, wood burning stove, candles - they are alive and elemental in a way that central heating and electric light can never be.
We have a wood-burning stove. It heats the water and four radiators.
It is hard work, stacking wood, drying it, lugging it in in baskets. The stove (and the woodpile) need regular attention, the chimney requires sweeping twice a year, it's quite hard to regulate the temperature at times .........but I love it. Cheering blaze, glowing embers, smell of logs, and I like to think it keeps us fit. There may come a day when I yearn to just flick a switch I know....
We burn both coal and wood as hardwoods are not easy to come by here and softwoods burn so quickly you would never keep up in the cold weather. We recently tried sawdust logs which use up wood waste, burn for four hours and leave very little ash - I think we may order more of these.
The comfort of it on a cold wet and stormy night like tonight is so worth the effort.
As for candles, I love them both indoors and out. We always light some on the dinner table, and sometimes at lunch as they do in Sweden. I find the steady flame of a candle has a very calming effect. Again - it is alive. (I tried little battery ones - awful!)
I like the real thing.
It is what is attractive to me about the elemental.
It is real.
Fiery, fired up, fire in the belly, trailblazer perhaps - would any of these describe you?
Perhaps fire is your element!
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