The first fire. A new circle of stones. Sticks and twigs and birch bark and scrap wood collected and easily blazing. A blade against a branch to sharpen a point, and dinner cooked while sitting barefoot on the ground.
A blanket. Cascading calls of white-throated sparrows, warblers, and I don’t know what else. The green of fireflies winking on and off through the trees and in the yard. And hardly any bugs to speak of so I could stay out until the fire burned down to coals and the sky dropped deeper into darkness and the moon made a bright orange smudge beyond my little patch of woods.
It’s good to be here. It’s good to sit on the earth and look at the trees and have nothing to do but let my mind go on and off, bright and dark, like the fireflies; to do no Striving or Accomplishing or Intending at all, but just to grow on the ground, slowly, like any other green thing.
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