Burning season

(Baonghean.vn) - It has been a long time since I smelled that scent. The smell of straw smoke rising from the village fields after the harvest. Suddenly, the memories of my childhood buried under the stubble flooded back to me...

In those days, every summer, we children followed our mother to the rice fields to harvest rice. It was called harvest time, but at a young age, we did small jobs: some tended cows, some were servants carrying water and sickles. In the afternoon, we would lie on the cart full of rice that our father brought home.

Then the busy harvest days passed. To prepare for the new planting season, my mother carried a bamboo rake to the field to collect the scattered straw. She told me to collect the straw to burn, both to kill the grass and to clean the field, otherwise the dry straw would make the plowing path heavier.

Mother's figure in the afternoon sunset. Photo by Minh Chau

That day, the whole village did the same. In the evening, my mother’s figure bent under the golden sunlight, the fields were undulating with piles of dry straw. Of course, this was an opportunity that we children could not miss. Each of us grabbed the rake handle from my mother, competed to see who could gather the bigger pile of straw, then lit it on fire. The straw burned, the fire flared up brightly. We shouted at each other to jump over the fire until it was completely extinguished. Sweat poured out like a shower, and everyone’s face was covered in straw dust.

Smoke from the burning straw pile drifted into the village with the wind. The smoke was not pungent, but only had a faint, gentle scent. Perhaps it was the scent of the rice soul, of the sweat that soaked the fields. Until now, I still cannot describe the smell of that straw smoke. Just smelling it in the wind brings back memories. A season of burning fields…

Minh Chau