Marking Time

Campfires are fascinating. Clearly they stimulate fancy, especially if you follow the focus the fire provides while the daylight fades and night encroaches. By the time the milky way stripes the sky overhead like the back of a cosmic skunk, it’s often as though the dead have joined in, if only just beyond the periphery of the fire’s glow.

Falling into the temporal world of a campfire is aided by observing the burn and feeding in more wood as needed. The need of the fire becomes our new focal point in the world. The concerns of our life seem to gather with us into it’s presence and each problem is reshaped in the process. As reverie takes hold, the problems loosen their grip on us. I find they never quite sink their claws in the same way again.

Clearly we need ways to unplug from our often self imposed hectic schedules. Nothing works quite as well as the nightly ritual that carried man to the dawn of history.