Whispers of the Wild
How a night by the river and the crackle of a fire served as good medicine.
Our view for the evening.
The river was higher than normal this past weekend, thanks to all the rain we’ve had. The two small beaches my friend and I occasionally visit there had disappeared under water.
Undeterred, we searched for another spot and finally found one maybe half a mile down the trail, which wasn’t an issue, except I was lugging an off brand Duraflame log, a stool and a couple of other items. But the spot we found was worth it.
It had a gazillion anthills and we had to construct our own fire pit (see above), but it worked out in the end. My friend and I were there to unwind – to escape the city and just be.
The swollen river rushed by, carrying large pieces of debris past us. A few boats sped downriver, causing the wake to lap against the shoreline. Birds chirped, presumably to warn their friends that intruders were in their midst. Some sort of creature (I’m going to call it a beaver, but I’m a city boy, so what do I know?) trolled the river’s edge. And as nightfall approached, coyotes (or wolves?) howled in the distance (on the other side of the river, thankfully).
It’s pitch black under that canopy, which makes the contrast of the fire all the more cozy (and necessary) for conversation. Although, “cozy” is probably the wrong word. The stool I brought was far too low to the ground for my 57-year-old body, so I ended up standing half the time (why tempt the ants?). But the popping and crackling of a fire is good medicine, and this one was no exception. It allowed my friend and I to settle into conversation.
I didn’t know this, but according to this guy, “Fires pop and crackle because the moisture that is stored within small pockets of the wood fibers turns to steam in the lit wood. The trapped gasses eventually build up enough pressure to find a way to burst out of the wood. Firewood with a lower moisture content will pop and crackle much less than wood with a higher one.”
Maybe this is why sitting around the fire with somebody is so conducive to good conversation. The stuff we bring to the fire – the troubles and pain and suffering that is trapped inside – bursts out of us as the fire mesmerizes us. We crackle and pop as it comes out, but there’s a refining beauty, healing and understanding in that.
A quote from Elisabeth Elliot’s book, Suffering Is Never For Nothing, seems to fit here. She wrote: “The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.”
We outlasted the fire.
