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But in spite of that, after a day in the
outdoors, we built a fire. A small fire. A "hat" fire, which
mountain people define as one you can put in your hat. Why so small?
Because it was hot and we didn't need the heat. Why the fire?
Because we need the fire.
It is the hearth. It is the touchstone to our
past.
It is a link with countless generations of
ancestors who have sat here looking at the flames licking up on the
chunks of firewood and taking us back endless years, countless
years, to what was then. Through the flames and later the glow of
the coals, we can see things that we can't see at any other time. We
can hear music in the crackling. We can be comforted by the fire,
which is our best friend as well as a potential destroyer at the
same time.
How many times have we looked into the flames
of a small fire, just like this? It's beyond counting. Sometimes the
fire has been in a fireplace with all kinds of louvers and vents and
controls, and yet even then we shut off the lights and sat quietly,
looking into the fire and taking ourselves back to our beginnings.
It is important that we do this -- so important to our emotional
health that we willingly pay extra for a modern city house or
apartment that has a fireplace.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
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No sense at all until you look into the fire
and those same questions come along. Who am I? Am I doing what I'm
supposed to be doing? Is my life being spent for the right things?
What more can I be doing?
Do we remember other fires in faraway places?
Places where the weather is different, the animals are different,
the people are different. Remember using wood from other kinds of
trees? Remember sitting around the fire with others who are only
with us now during these quiet times by the fire and in the
sanctuary of memory?
We ask ourselves these questions, but the
answers can only be found in the silent glowing of the coals, and we
can only hope we stack up right in the long run.
Because when we look into the coals, at the end
of a long day, it's our way of going home.
[Slim Randles]
Brought to you by "Raven's Prey." Check it out
at www.slimrandles.com.
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