Craig and I cut down the white pine tree in the back yard to make way for a brighter, sunnier back yard. Kelly came out and helped cut down the larger branches and stack it in a pile next to the fence.
And, well...okay, it might have been cut down to make room for a fire pit that I've been jonesing to get going.
Just after it got dark, we dumped a pile of wood from the crab apple tree cut down two months earlier into the makeshift block circle and lit it on fire. It'd be easy to tell who the city boys were from a distance. Neither of us could light a decent fire at first. It took a while but we got it going...funny that we were both Boy Scouts at one time in our youth.
So, the three of us stood there, perched on the stone ring of the fire pit and watched the flames slowly grow.
While we sweat our asses off...it was over 85 degrees.
And just about every night since, I've lit a fire in the pit-sometimes with a group of friends, sometimes with just one friend. On at least one occasion, I've sat there alone, staring into the fire...re-learning how to relax and enjoy the silence.
It's about the fire...and its power to break things down into more simple components. Alter composition of wood without changing its overall shape. Create heat. Make everything smell like a campfire (including my pillow in bed). Remember how to breathe deeply in spite of all that's going on around. Put me back to my 'center' without any effort beyond stacking pieces of wood.
Every night, I walk away from that fire pit with a slightly deeper understanding of myself and the world around me. I think about a lot in those short 2-3 hours.
One more tree is coming down on Saturday and I hope its wood brings the same fires that have brought so much solitude and ataraxia these past few nights. I expect to be using this fire pit until it's way too cold to be outside this Winter.
Background Tune: "Just So" by Agnes Obel
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