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 The
other night it was hot. Hot during the day, hot at night. Heat seems
to define this time of year for us, in many ways.
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. [to top of second
column] |
It doesn't make any sense at
all.
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.
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
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