Fire

I lit a fire today. It's been a rough, tough couple of months and someone that I am tertiarally familiar with passed away. Work has been less and less desirable and in the meantime I've basically been without energy and sick in some way or other since January.

Today was especially tiring and after taking a long nap or two I decided to enjoy our first spring storm with a cheery fire.

On the one hand, bad idea. Part of my on going health battle has been a week and a half old headache that makes my eyes especially sensitive to light. I couldn't do a disco, I barely managed the fire.

But while I was squinting painfully into its homey light it reminded me of a bunch of fires.

The Snowman Island Fire

My little sister and I, back around the time of middle school, would often end up at the college campus where my father taught, on dreary and boring summer afternoons. We played in the classrooms drawing on every black board, pretending that the room was a submarine, or the USS Enterprise. Or explore the campus and the woods surrounding it.

One particular afternoon we had a bag of apples, some matches, and a pocket knife. We headed out down the creek that runs through the campus, clomping over familiar rocks and deer trails and hopping across small runs of water that collected either side of sandbars. Each of those sandbars were islands, and of course we named them.  One of those sand bars was a large patch of stone and sand that looked suspiciously like a giant snowman.

We were hungry by the time we reached it. We hunted for sticks and pine needles and dry weeds and piled it all up on the sand bar and found sticks for the apples and lit the fire, then ate roasted apples all alone out in the wilderness.

A 12 year old and a 9 year old. I'd like to see a 9 year old do that these days!

The Mohican Trail Fire

Some time in the middle of college, after I had started to save the stipend I was receiving, and after the roommate that disgusted me and the old friend that delighted me became girlfriend and boyfriend, I suggested a hiking trip. We were meant to go about two hours south of campus but ended up two hours west. I was driving, the lovers were napping in the back.  I pulled the smoothest redirect that I could and went north and we ended up, four hours later, at a state park that should have only taken thirty minutes to reach.

But we made it.

Then I got us lost by leaving the trails. We walked briefly down some back country roads and trespassed in a couple of fields, headed down a steep and slippery valley full of giant granite boulders, then finally found our way back to the trails.

Then we built a fire! I had bought some food and we worked together to gather sticks. But we really didn't have a good starter. So I burned a shoe box that was in amongst the junk in my trunk.

Then soaked to the bone we all went back to my roommate's house and my old friend burned a sock on her wood burning stove.

The Underpass Fire

When things at school became too much to handle, I had many less-than-constructive bad habits to turn to. But, one of the good habits, involved walking off campus (at all hours...) and up to the overpass that spanned more of the same river.

Sometimes I brought food with me. One time when I went with a friend, we scarfed some of the corn that was lying in a plowed field just behind the college.

The rocky decline on one side was perfectly shielded. I don't know how many bikes, footballs, tennis balls, socks, hoodies and beer bottles I saw there. But the underpass also captured organic material and there was always an excellent collection of drift wood.

When my friend and I went down we roasted the field corn. On my own I might have a can of spaghettios or beans. I would sit and smoke a cigar, or write something, or just listen to music. I would listen to the cars whispering by underneath and just take a step back into time.

The Bad News Fire

I was sixteen, getting ready a week in advance for the trip I would be going on once school ended. I was headed for Cali to join up with a song and dance tour exploring the South Western United States. I was in the back yard, burning old paper trash from my room when I heard some cars pull up in the driveway.

I was mad, for some reason or another. Or maybe just melancholy from watching old reports and drawings and story starts burn up. But for whatever reason I had no interest whatsoever in going to see who had just arrived.

Ten minutes passed before two of the ladies from my church ventured back to the burn barrel. They were acting like someone had died. They wanted me to come inside. They said, "Your father needs you."

I knew I didn't want to have anything to do with the hands on powwow they were preparing me for. It couldn't possibly be good news. And to this day it sorta irks me that Dad couldn't have just told me the news instead of 'inviting' someone I barely knew to do it.

But that afternoon I was told that my mother had left, she had disappeared over night leaving only a note on Dad's pillow. She wanted a divorce.

The minute I could get out of the house I ran up to my (then) best friend's house. We talked, I was upset but I didn't cry. And on the way home there was a thunder storm.

Other Fires

At camps, at reenactments, in other parks or on trails, at home, at my uncle's home, once using steel and flint, even fake fires!

It has always been a part of my life, a talent that worked hard to earn, and bright beacon leading to many, many memories. Shame I couldn't enjoy today's memory.