On burning away

A Good Friday memory

We burned our trash when I was young.

As a teenager, I’d haul trash cans of consumer waste - milk jugs, hay twine, empty cans - to a pit and an empty oil drum in the pines. It was quiet and still, sometimes I would stand silently smelling the sweet fresh air, hearing the small animals rustling somewhere close - a woodpecker, sometimes a brave bunny, maybe even a deer or two. We only burned when it was cold and wet so I always recall wearing unshapely Carhartts and thick boots. I liked lighting the first cardboard box in the barrel and watching the snow inside melt away like magic - soon there would be no snow at the base of the barrel, the heat from disposing of our waste would melt everything around, leaving smashed winter pine needles and frosty mud exposed.

The smell was awful and the smoke was black and ugly, but I loved the science experiment of burning things. I watched milk jugs give a hiss as they popped and then melted; the paper wrapping peeling off of tin cans and disappeari…