The Fire Would Not Go Out And We Had No Fuel Left

Four of us, an autumn trip, a legal fire ring in a legal place, and a firewood situation we had badly misjudged.

At midnight we put the last of it on and agreed to let it die, because that is what you do.

At four, I got up to pee and the fire was exactly the same. Not embers. Flames, the height of my hand, doing what flames do.

There was no wood in it. I want to say that again, plainly, because it is the whole account: there was nothing in the fire ring. No logs, no half-burned ends, nothing. Just flame, sitting on ash.

I stood there for a while, in the cold, with my head not really working.

Then I did something stupid and I put my hand near it, and it was warm, but not hot enough. A fire that size, at that distance, should hurt. It did not hurt.

And the ground around the ring, which had been baked all evening, was cold to the touch.

I woke Ellis, because I needed a witness, and Ellis is a paramedic and the most literal person I know. He looked at it for maybe thirty seconds. He said, "That's not a fire."

Then he went back to his tent and zipped it and did not come out until it was light.

It was gone by dawn. Not smoking. Gone. The ash was undisturbed and cold and had a shape in it that I photographed and that looks, in the photograph, like nothing at all, because photographs are useless in this hobby.

The four of us have discussed it exactly once, in a car park, and Ellis said one more thing that I have not been able to shake.

He said: "It was there so we'd stay in the light."

We have never worked out whether that means something was being kind to us, or whether something was making sure we stayed exactly where it had put us.