Burning Man

(ode to the lost art of burning leaves, 10/24/05)

Around this time of year, on a typical Minneapolis weekend in the '60s, citizens and wiccans would ritualistically take to raking their lawns. If they cocked their ears and imaginations to the wind, they could hear the crowds of Memorial or Metropolitan stadiums, roaring for their tribes and gladiator heroes battling in the great outdoors. And if their ears and imaginations failed them, they could always stop what they were raking and hear the sound of WCCO-AM on transistor radios, incanting across the zephyr.

Autumn is here, and a young man's thoughts turn to these things. Perhaps because raking is the dullest and most fruitless of all of Satan's chores, for all it accomplishes is a chump's clarity: Would it be so bad to leave unmade the bed of dead leaves and dirty grass? Would it be such a disaster if it all simply rested beneath the snow, snuggling as one big slop trough, for six months?

Once upon a time, though, there was a pay-off. A ceremony. Incense. To be sure, when it comes to olfactory orgasms, there is nothing like fall. Nothing, not the lilacs of spring, the bouys of summer, the brace of winter, delivers the same crisp wonder and bittersweet symphony. Fall is the time of year when the dark night of the soul screams "something's missing," and harkens back to a time of rustling school corduroys, and the perfume of burning leaves.

Yes, my dark lovelies. It is no myth. It was everywhere. It was pure pagan celebration, sanctioned by the city fathers. Rake and rake and rake would we, and then we would pile scratchy brown-and-orange effigy-ready piles on the lawn, street, curb, or gutter.

Some would jump into the veiny mounds, but that was kids' stuff. Most raked only to "burn burn burn like roman candles," as Kerouac had it--you just had to be careful not to let it spread to parked cars and turn the whole unholy event into a live feed from Halloween in the Castro, or a post-NBA championship celebration in Detroit.

They were smoke signals, nothing less. The butterfly effect, before it had a name: In the lighting of a pile of leaves in the middle of the city, there was some serious black magic being played out; a communing with other smokers down the block, across the river, and through the woods. It was a connection to something ancient, something mystical, and a way to live out what a brick in front of the Writers Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland says: "Go back far enough and all humankind are cousins--Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999)."

Go back far enough in this city's history, and you will discover a flamin' groovy time before 1971. That was the year the outdoor burning ban went into effect. Some tree-huggers got their undies in a bundle about the ozone and dioxins, and pushed through a measure to stop the fires and turn leaves into compost and mulch for the sake of future generations.

And now here we are--safe and sound and fireless. "I miss burning leaves," said my friend Shawn, an expatriate Minnesotan living in Hollywood. "We lived in the country and would burn the 'brush pile' that had accumulated over the summer. Dead branches, dead mice, dead birds, dead leaves, dead grass. We would dump a few gallons of used car oil on it and light her up. Then we would be out there 'til midnight waiting for it to die down."

"My father had a leaf-burner next to the garage by the alley," said my friend Erik, an expat from Seattle who recently returned to Minneapolis. "It had holes in the sides where fire had burned through over the years. It made raking leaves much more fun, and it smelled and felt good to be next to the fire. When my parents told me we couldn't do it anymore and why--'Because it was bad for the environment'--I felt bad that I had enjoyed it before."

Oh, but it was good. So, so, so good. Never mind global warming, the pagans contend that "burning oak leaves purifies the atmosphere," not to mention serving as "doorways to the mysteries, health, money, healing, potency, fertility, strength, endurance, good luck, longevity, primeval strength, and to preserve youthfulness."

I can't get enough of that stuff, so I summoned the Minneapolis fire marshal, Dave Dewall, to see if he'd give my bursting-at-the-sternum inner pagan a permit to burn leaves. He was a total puritan wet blanket. He said there's a city ordinance against burning leaves for good reason, but that fires can be had on private property with "cord wood, no branches, leaves, or debris, and the pit must be no more than three feet in diameter."

Not exactly the sort of thing that inspires whooping and getting naked around the circle of life. Dude had nearly doused my inner flame, until I realized I don't need a watered-down version of my flaming youth. I've got my memories to keep me warm. To wit:

When I was a wee lad growing up in this bastard burg, one of my household chores was to take out the trash and burn it. After dinner and dishes, I'd haul out a paper bag of tin cans, dirty diapers, plastic cartons, and the like, and toss it into a metal trashcan near the alley. Then I'd light a match. If it didn't catch, I'd sprinkle in some lighter fluid and watch the smoke and flames lap the stars.

Same thing with leaves. One night, during a particularly high bonfire in the alley, my brother found a crippled bat. He picked it up and tossed it on the pyre. We cackled as the heat immolated the fur and wings, setting into motion an entire chain of events that brought all who were there that night blessings that the pagans say come from standing around cauldrons and candles and burning leaves, not bending and bagging and tying.