It’s that time of year again and the new hawks are here. The one I see is rather small and whitish, which means he is a fledgling. Hawks gestation is 28 days and they fledge at 45 days. Hawk medicine has to do with being patient and observing. I spent some time at the firepit yesterday, rearranging the stones and bricks. I always have dry kindling and logs, although everything around me was dampened by the light drizzly rain of the last few days. Water droplets were still dripping off the oak leaves onto me, but the small fire burned cleanly, barely any smoke, cooking my sweet potato to perfection.
I love to watch the logs and how they burn and interact with each other at the various stages of disintegration. Just like us humans as we cook the ego and become more ash, more of the essence we are, without the bark and dense fibre of our materialistic overlay. I watched the logs burn more brightly when they were together, and eventually mesh into one mass of ash. I watched a log off by itself, still burning though not as brightly.
I put a marshmallow in on a stick and tried various cooking distances from the flame. I found it cooked even when just barely within the space of the pit, though of course cooked faster as it approached the flame itself. A great metaphor for my own social interaction. I am cooked faster by some people and events than by others, depending on how close to the situation I want to get, and how much I allow.
When I sit at the firepit, I get to watch the sky. I couldn’t watch the sky before the fire of June 2003 took all the pines in the west woods down. Or before Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 took the big oak in the back yard down. But because of those two events, now I see that big beautiful wonderful sky.
As I watched the fire and the sun fading on the horizon, I thought once again how lucky and blessed I am to live here, where I can be out in nature in my own little woods anytime I want. I thought what a freedom it is to just have a space like this to roam around in.
Being quiet in nature gives me a feeling of having lots of space between the molecules.
I like that.
RELATED: Last evening at the firepit
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A New Crop Of Baby Hawks and the Bonfire Metaphor