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.
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.
-------------
Leather
that looks much better than when the cow was using it. Use
your imagination. www.artvincentleather.com.