What does fire feel like to hold? The other four elements—metal, wood, earth, water—can be held. Fire can’t be held, even while wearing a pair of fireproof gloves. It is hot, and its heat does things like burn, consume or merely warm. But what is it? It has so much power, but it lacks thing-ness. Take away the fuel and the oxygen and it dies.
There is an analogy that relates to the idea of transference of consciousness. Think of two candles, one lit and one unlit. The consciousness is the flame. Touch the flame to the unlit candle and the flame transfers. Is it the same flame or a different one? Has it become new because it passed from one candle to another?
At first glance, the analogy is simple and makes sense. But when it comes to applying analytical thought to the idea…well, as King Lear said, “that way madness lies.” I circle back to the first glance and my sanity is spared.
Fire transforms. Flames are beautiful. Even burned things are beautiful. One chilly day in late March 2021, I huddled on the porch with my son and a crumpled piece of paper. We had discovered it while looking through my late father’s personal effects.
What was written there…well, suffice it to say we were emotionally rattled to unexpectedly re-live a bad moment, and decided to burn the evidence on the front porch. The crumpled paper magically transformed into a beautiful black rose with ash-grey edges to its petals. After a couple of moments, the ashes of the rose drifted down into my front garden.
That garden now hosts many mementos: some hairs from two of our now-deceased cats, burned leaves from several smudging ceremonies, some prayers said for departed loved ones when planting memorial flowering plants, and the sweat from digging up the original inhabitants of the space…the biggest, toughest and ugliest junipers ever. They too were burned in the fireplace of a family member. Fragrant juniper smoke rose up the chimney and out into the city. The red-orange embers glowed and pulsed rhythmically, just beneath the soft grey texture of the wood ash.
In our early camping and backpacking days, we built campfires. Now, we barely manage to stay awake until the first few stars glimmer in the twilight sky, and more often than not, there’s a fire ban due to dry conditions. But I like to invoke the peaceful feeling of a campfire, sometimes when teaching my t’ai chi students about a long, supple spine. Think of a column of smoke on an absolutely windless evening, I tell them. Visualize how it rises effortlessly and gracefully. One of my favorite authors, N. Scott Momaday, elicited that feeling in his 2020 book Earth Keepers:
“The story from which my name comes is also the story of my seven sisters, who were borne into the sky and became the stars of the Big Dipper. The story is very important, for it relates us to the stars. It is a bridge between the earth and the heavens. There is no earth without the sun and moon. There is no earth without the stars. When we die, Dragonfly says, we go to the farther camps. There is life in the farther camps. The stars are fires in the farther camps.
“In the making of my song,
There is a crystal wind
And the burnished dark of dusk
There is the memory of elders dancing
In firelight at Two Meadows
Where the reeds whisper
I sing and there is gladness in it
And laughter like the play of spinning leaves
I sing and I am gone from sorrow
To the farther camps”
I sing and I am gone from sorrow. The firelight carries a spark of joy, creativity, anticipation. Even from blackest death it rises.
This summer we dove through the Troublesome burn scar on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. On the edge of the moonscape, two elk cantered across an open meadow and some scarlet gilia bloomed on the edge of the road. I was wishing for time to hurry forward with the green wisps and shoots, so that the visitors, staring in horror at the black spikes of dead trees, could be reassured of the resilience of life. Wood fuels fire, fire gives rise to earth, as it says in the constructive cycle of the Chinese cosmological elements. And so we wait.
