A few weeks ago, on a pleasant Saturday evening with nothing to do and all night to not do it, I built a fire in our backyard fire pit. It was a perfect night for a fire. The weather had settled into that late summer/early fall state of grace that lasts about a week around these parts. The temps were not too hot or cold, the air was clean, the humidity and bugs took the night off, and you could feel a breeze so calm and gentle it practically asked permission to pass on through.
Adding to the positive vibe was the fact that one of our next-door neighbors was out of town. This was the neighbor with the supersized backyard deck that towers over our yard and fence with such aggression that whenever someone hangs out on it, you can almost feel their breath on your neck, which pretty much kills your privacy buzz, but never mind…..
On this night, they were nowhere to be seen. And the weather was perfect. And I didn’t really feel like doing much of anything. So I built a fire in the back patio fire pit.
It’s a fine fire pit, made of brick, with a metal interior to hold the wood and kindling. The pit is surrounded by outdoor furniture, and located in a part of the backyard with a large brick patio and paved parking area, quite a distance from the grass and trees, meaning it’s one really, really safe area for a backyard fire.
All of this stuff came with the house when we bought it three years ago. I’d never had a fire pit before. I’d never had such a large backyard, either, or so much patio and parking space.
The backyard might be my favorite part of the house. I can hit tennis back there against my tennis rebounding practice wall (really more of a net than a “wall”). I can shoot baskets at the basketball goal. Our daughters and I can practice softball (they’re on the local high school team). When our daughters started learning how to drive, we used the back parking area to practice starting the car, steering it, backing it up, all that.
To the rear of the patio and parking area is a modest lawn, which holds a couple of tall, ancient trees (the house dates back more than a century). The trees shed a ton of leaves during the fall (sigh). But they also drop lots of branches and sticks throughout the year, which we gather up for the fire pit.
I admit to cheating a little when it comes to backyard fires. The home’s previous owner left behind some of those prefab starter logs, so we use those to get the fire going, along with kindling we collect. There are also proper logs scattered about. We’ve had probably a dozen or more backyard fires since moving in. Not too many. But enough to feel like we’re taking advantage of the opportunity.
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I’m an old hand at building fires, having gotten my start as a youngster in a YMCA scout organization that was sort of like the Boy Scouts, except without the cool badges. Later on, as a younger adult, I went on quite a few camping trips with friends.
On just about all these outings, across all the years, fires were our main source of evening entertainment, following a day of setting up camp, hiking, fishing, swimming, and dicking around. After dinner was slurped up and we got tired of trading jokes and insults, we poked at the fire. When we tired of that, we just stared at it.
Have you ever stared at a fire? I mean, really, really stared at it?
If so, then you know it’s a living organism, a world unto itself, a thing of beauty and mystery and intrigue. There is no work of art created by humans that can match the artistry of a fire. It sings and dances, paints and sculpts. It tells a thousand little stories in a million different rhythms and rhymes.
Stare at it long enough, and you get the feeling it communicates with a world we can’t see, sending messages we will never understand.
There’s a science behind it as well. Look at the way a fire fills up all the space around it, jagging here and darting there, attacking the heavens one moment and then seeking cover the next. It moves in patterns both linear and non-linear, like a complex math equation, making hundreds of little calculations designed to keep burning, burning, burning.
A fire will fight for survival down to the last ember, whether it’s a massive inferno that rumbles across hundreds of thousands of acres, or a small backyard fire in a pit that measures only a few feet in diameter. It goes through an entire life cycle in the space of a few hours.
You can watch it age in real time, from the wonder and restlessness of youth to the gasping resignation of old age.
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You might have noticed that the title of this blog starts out with “Groundbreaking Technologies, Part 2.”
Last week I wrote Part 1, which focused on the very rapid and unnerving evolution of Artificial Intelligence, a 21st century technology that has been thousands of years in the making, and now has the potential to turn us all into human dust if not managed the right way.
Unlike AI, fire is not man-made. Wildfires predated humans by millions of year and trace their origins to the earliest plant life, according to research into fossil charcoal. But it wasn’t until humans came along that fires could be managed and controlled for specific purposes and toward specific ends.
In this sense, fire became a human technology, not unlike AI. It was probably the second major technology developed by humans, following stone tools.
I’m not sure how many other world-changing technologies/inventions you can point to. A quick list might include the wheel, plow, printing press, water vessel, firearm, steam engine, electricity, internal combustion engine, automobile, flying machine, transistor, internet, smartphone…
And AI.
Fire predates all of those. Once humans discovered fire, it forever changed the way we eat, live, socialize, travel, protect each other and kill each other. It has been used as a force for good and harm, much like artificial intelligence. And like AI, fire has the ability to think on its own, act on its own, spread on its own, without humans guiding it.
But the similarities end there.
Fire belongs to the earth, the natural world. It was here before we arrived and will remain long after we’re gone. The earth has a way of healing itself. As long as the sun remains, some kind of life form will continue on earth. Fire will be one of those life forms.
Not so with AI. It might have an ability to think on its own, and could conceivably survive for a while even if people no longer do.
But without its human creators to shield it from harm, AI eventually will be torn asunder by the earthly forces of wind and rain, floods and drought, earthquakes, tornadoes, typhoons, tidal waves, ice and fire, fire and ice and fire.
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I spent a couple of hours by myself just staring at the fire in our backyard pit, while the other family members were inside doing other things. My night consisted of staring at the fire, sipping tea, collecting more wood, feeding the fire, and staring at it some more.
It was exactly what I needed at that moment in time. No electronics or gadgets to keep me busy. Just a fire, burning in much the same way it did millions of years ago, before human eyes could even witness it. I found comfort in that.
There’s comfort in the fact that I shared time with an ancient and noble force, one with more wisdom and grace than the collective sum of every human who has ever lived.
Wiser than AI.
Wiser and greater and stronger than all of us.
Image: The home fire, burning bright.
