BECAUSE THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRORS

When was the last time you sat in front of a fire?

I don’t mean that fire you might have in your house, all nicely contained in a steel box or surmounted by a mantlepiece. I mean a proper fire. Out in the bush somewhere.

I’ll make an educated guess and say a disturbing amount of you will reply: “I can’t remember.” And an even more disturbing amount of you will say: “Never”.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Sucks to be fucken you, then.

You are depriving yourself of what is the greatest and simultaneously the simplest thing anyone can ever experience. And it is such a simple thing. A fire, with wood you have gathered, burning somewhere which is an appreciable distance from civilisation.

“What’s the big deal?” say the ones who have never done it. “Bloody fires. Smoke, flames, sparks, coals. You have to go and get the wood, for fuck’s sake! Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Why bother? If you’re cold just turn on the air-con.”

It’s not about being cold, though nothing warms you like a fire.

It’s about the fire. And you sitting in front of it and staring into the flames. It’s about tending it. It’s about walking away from its indescribable pull and getting more wood. And then coming back to its indecipherable comfort and blessing.

Fire is something forever ingrained in our genetic memory. Obviously for all the reasons you already know. Back in the day, it warmed us. It kept predators away. It allowed us to cook our food. And maybe, most crucially, it allowed us to relax a little from the stresses of surviving in a world that spent all of its time trying to murder us. So our brains got bigger.

I know, I know. Those days are long gone. We now have electricity. And I’m a fan. Love that shit. We have western civilisation – the best civilisation we are told – and it’s been quite some time since we had to fight a bear in the mouth of the family cave with nothing but a sharp stick. It’s also been a while since your neighbour could come and take your wife, kids, berries, and dried meat for himself, make a necklace out of your teeth and eat your heart.

And that is a good thing. No argument.

But just because the world is not like that anymore does not mean fire has lost its magic. That magic cannot ever be lost. It is too deeply ingrained in every one of us. We have just forgotten about it. Not all of us, of course, but far too many of us.

Our lives no longer depend on fire, so what purpose does it serve?

The night is no longer dark and full of terrors like George RR Martin felt it was when he sent the Red Woman to rub her boobs all over Stanis Baratheon’s face and talk him into burning his daughter to death to please the Lord of Light in Game of Thrones.

But yet it is.

Calm down. I know Game of Thrones is a work of fiction. Things is, humans have been worshipping fire ever since we worked out how to make it.

Because back then, the fucking night was fucking dark and full of very real fucking terrors.

And it was only our ability to make fire that unfucked all of this.

Fire has been at the centre of almost every pre-Christian religion (and still remains part of Christian tradition), and part of every society on earth. From the Stone Age until we got this electricity business sorted out between 1920 and 1960.

For the preceding million-odd years we just had fire. There is evidence we used fire that long ago, and there is more evidence we were able to actually make fire some 700,000 years ago. That is how long it has been an indivisible part of us being human, growing bigger brains, and conquering the planet.

Fire is the single most important human technological breakthrough. Full stop.

And to sit in front of a fire, somewhere in a dark forest, a lonely hilltop, or a trackless wasteland, and stare into the flames is the one single most wonderful, satisfying, and uplifting thing a human can ever do.

Go do it. It’s not that hard.