From the perspective of the campfire the dark is only dark. From the hidden-ness of the dark however, everything in the world is seen and sensed. The camper is blinded by the light, the wolf not.
We tell stories here in our blindness and, perhaps, we come to put more faith in them than we do the world of shadows, the real world just beyond the light of the fire
We step toward the campfire and the world becomes small, enlarged only in the telling of it, ourselves becoming the world in this weaving. As we step back into the shadows, the campfire becomes another place among infinite places.
It’s a dangerous seduction this fire, offering us illumination, heat, comfort, security, isolation, illusion, and distraction in the all consuming fire, its smoke clouding the air, its smell crowding out other smells, the signs of life, smell of wolf, bear, beaver, the perfume of sumac, pine, peat
And yet in these fantasies the world is recreated. We are little gods by virtue of the fire, tempted to believe, as we are, that our small worlds are all that is most real, larger than life.
