This week I have been for one of those box ticking exercises inflicted by the NHS - a health check. I have a suitably bruised arm from a fairly novice blood taker, and an instruction to walk more - despite being in the "active" category which apparently very few are!! Madness. Didn't need any encouragement - I swam at 8am and then went to Knightshayes to walk. The kitchen garden is always the best bit - lovely shapes and the fragrances of herbs. The weird and twisty shapes. The bright dahlias and sunflowers lifted my heart. Quiet trees and needle strewn paths and an avoidance of the honey pot of the tea shop!
Afterwards, I helped my friends in their project of a garden: I was their bonfire warden, after telling them last time that I wanted to be the one to light the fire: I left too long between visits so the fire was a damped down, smouldering ash heap with blackened stumps but a heart of glow and embers. My job to wake the dragon!
Fire. Warmth, light, danger, safety, flickers of orange dancing up around green mottled wood. Feeding it air and fuel to awaken it.
The hissing and crackling as green leaves and fir branches went on. Explosions of sparks from the giant fire cones - nature's fire lighters, resinous and eventually alight and blackening. I couldn't stop staring into it's depths as the tiger flames hungrily curled into the green wood. White smoke curled and billowed up and out, drifting across the grass. Ashes swirl around the firepit.
Standing and watching, feeling the warmth on shorts and bare legs, sign of the spirit, life and unpredictability, holiness and an edge of challenge. And because I am overthinking as I write, what I actually thought was "other people invite you to a barbecue, here it's me being barbecued" It was a shame we didn't have chocolate biscuits and marshmallows to toast - it was reminding me of being a guide, and building fires to cook on - going home reeking of woodsmoke and happiness.
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