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Respect Fire
~ a meditation of frost and fire ~
Winter’s frosty bite arrived very late to the Comox Valley this year—just last week.
This so-called winter has felt much more like fall, yielding strange sights in the garden, like spotting new growth on my honeysuckle bushes on New Year’s Eve.
The sudden frost, even if typical for late January, has been strange and unsettling too—arriving so out of the blue to bestow a sharp, wintery reminder.
Apparently my creative flow was unsettled too, as I took a full break from writing.
(Or I just wanted to do other things more than I wanted to write, I dunno.)
Instead, I used the extra time to:
Focus on cementing my yoga practice, leaning further into the space, openness, and range that’s begun appearing in my body.
Take care of a little winter cleaning, purging, and organizing—tending to some long-overdue chores and handling of life to-dos.
Regain my chess form (which has me up to an all-time high of 1951, helped along by beating my first 2000).
And perhaps most excitingly, aided by the cool air clearing out winter’s gray and gloom, the garden’s fire pit saw its first flames in two odd years.
This sacred fire pit, long dormant, roared back to life under a clear winter sky.
Fire is like a portal to another realm; an opening in the atmosphere from which flames spill, hungrily devouring anything and everything, reaching for the heavens.
Our modern world would not be without fire. Fire gave us light in darkness, a balm against the cold, and the means to transform raw ingredients into nourishment.
But fire is two-faced—equally capable of forging civilizations, or deleting them.
The same fire that heats your home, propels your car, and cooks your food can also burn your home, cause permanent damage to your body, and make food inedible.
As we’ve seen time and time again—most recently in Los Angeles—fire doesn’t care about us. Fire will destroy everything we know, treasure, love, and hold dear if we’re not careful. Even then, sometimes fire will simply do what fire does best and devour.
So fire demands respect.
This campfire-induced reflection on the nature of fire reminded me of one of the most haunting books I read last year, Fire Weather by John Vaillant—which was one uncomfortable, eye-opening read that I can’t say I enjoyed.
But given our rapidly heating and drying climate (and the fact that I live in a forest), I felt obliged to gain a better understanding of what the future may hold.
You’ll find no fiction in Fire Weather as the pages sear through the past, present, and future of wildfires on our planet, featuring a fiery, insightful blend of science, storytelling, and ominous warnings.
If you too live near a forest or if you’ve wondered about the future of our warming world, don’t sleep on Fire Weather—for fire demands respect.
Just like Larry David respects wood:
With love from the forest,
~ Alexander
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