This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.

It began with a few small firs, pulled out by the roots and tossed in a pile sometime last July. On a walk through the woods, I decided the path would be easier to negotiate if those three young trees weren’t where they were. The path itself was no more than a meander into the thick of the woods I planned to open up in the course of the summer. It was such a thicket that this winding, moss-covered track was the only friendly path through the prickly branchlets of spruce and dense fir extending fully to the ground.

Overhead is a grand overstory of large pines, a few big spruce trees and a mix of oak and birch and maple and beech. I had been looking over this site chosen for my summer’s endeavor for quite some time – a flat acre on a point on the shore of the Damariscotta, where a house will grow over the next few years. My problem of the moment – a true instance of not being able to see the forest for the trees – was one of not having a clear view of this piece of ground, how it was situated, nor just where to squint my eyes and try to imagine the future shape of things and where to drive my stakes.

“Got to open this place up,” I determined. As the weeks passed, working a day here and a day there, it did open up, and the little tossed pile of three tiny firs grew to be a mountainous affair that impressed even its builders. We – man, wife, child — cut and hacked and pruned and dragged and fought mosquitoes and gradually, like ants, built ourselves a monument to our efforts. We actually built many, but this first, central pile was by far the tallest and broadest of them all, 30 feet across and nearly 20 high.

Then, as I started dropping big pines where the house and barn will one day stand, their tops and knotty branches were mounded onto the pile too, compacting it, broadening it and adding to it their vast volume of drying needles and oozing, dripping pitch.

When early winter arrived, so did the heavy, tracked excavator that built the road. In idle moments between loads of gravel, that muscular yellow machine focused its awesome self on the future house site and, in particular, my brush pile, determined to add to its dimensions the sort of offerings that only a diesel engine, hydraulics and earth-moving steel would consider appropriate: stumps and junk logs and even some of the other piles in their entirety! The brush pile assumed a new and imposing, even intimidating, presence as it towered over me; the day was coming I would have to deal with it.

For three months I thought about it. The snows fell. The brush pile slept – a mountain of solar energy in wood fiber and resins – sleeping a woodsy dream all while the river drifted past and mice made nests in its deep, aromatic soul. And then, last Saturday, feeling the approach of spring, I stole up on the sleeping giant with some apprehension and a match… knowing full well the maelstrom of nightmare I was about to unleash.

That was all it took – one match. With the crackling of eager young flames, piney smoke raced upwards, curling and blue. Quickly it became a streaming wall of orange fire, and then a roaring volcano, a mountain of forest materials with a giant jet engine at its center. A fearsome firestorm built upon itself in my clearing in the woods, creating its own wind, which rushed inward at the bottom, past me as I held up my hands to shield my face from the heat, and whipped up into the lashing treetops, laden with sparks and smoke-trailing cinders. The giant flames leapt high, very high, too high, like great orange sails, reaching, licking, stinging the air, spending themselves wildly.

I stepped back in the snow, now dirty with the black ash that rained down around me. I held my pitchfork in my hand and watched. The brush pile settled in its fiery torment, its combustion fully fueled. Knots and pitch-pockets popped like rifle shots. A deer mouse ran out from the bottom of the pile and disappeared.

It burned for a long time, and smoldered for days. As I watched it burn, I thought about the energy locked up in just this little patch of forest, energy that had streamed into these woods from the Sun. What a hellish place the Sun must be! Three little firs by a forest path, gentle receivers of dewy sunbeams, yes, but oh, the wonders they hold in their fragrant greenery.

Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. In October 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.