So a Forest Service worker started the immense wildfires in Colorado when she decided to burn a letter from her "estranged husband" in the middle of a tinder-dry forest. Smart! Couldn't she just tear up the jerk's letter at home and flush it down the toilet? It might have caused her sewer pipe to back up, but at least that would be a slightly more manageable problem.

There is a ceremonial aspect to burning a letter, though, I suppose. Sylvia Plath wrote a poem on that theme, entitled "Burning the Letters," about--yep!--burning her estranged husband's missives. Here are a few lines:

"I made a fire; being tired
Of the white fists of old
Letters and their death rattle
When I came too close to the wastebasket.
What did they know that I didn't?
...
This fire may lick and fawn, but it is merciless . . . ."

Hatrid is a fire that is hard to put out.