Come to the fire
My eyes pop open in the hours before dawn as though a dim voice has spoken plainly into my ear, “Time to get up. Come to the fire.” I swing out of bed and whisper to my wife, Carin, who is still asleep, “I’m going to the fire.” I quietly get dressed, drink ½ a cup of coffee, and head out the door with a medicine bag over my shoulder.
“Come to the fire” is a silent whisper, a gentle call to slip into the woods in the morning stillness.
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The wind was so fierce that I couldn’t keep a fire and so cold that I couldn’t sit still. It whipped wildly through the canyons and across open fields as if the spirit of the place had broken free.
In the pitch-black night I walked away from my camp along a narrow dirt road. Deliberately veering off the road, I stumbled through a choke of bushes and brambles descending into a dry river bed. I knelt down in the soft, cracked soil, thankful for respite from the incessant wind.
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