Check out the sun.
It’s just a big ball of fire swirling high in the sky.
Plants, heat, life, pretty sunsets — damn girl, that’s some good deals for free.
Yes, we owe a lot to that friendly fireball so it’s no wonder one of the Greatest Things We Ever Did was make fire in its likeness here on Earth. So first up, let’s just stop for a moment today and close our eyes to say “Good job, Cavemen.”
Now these days whether you’re sitting on a wet log around a smoky campfire, cuddling on the couch on Christmas eve, or cooking up dinner on the grill, it sure is easy to get mesmerized by the flames.
Stare into the red hot heat as it crackles and pops before your eyes. Watch as licks and curls unfurl and swirl in a twisted dance of fiery flames. Let the heat wash over you as those beautiful shapes flicker in a neverending show of lights. There is a rhythm and beat to the movement but at the same time it’s just… natural and free.
Staring into a fire warms your eyes… and your heart. Sometimes it comes with tea and hot chocolate, squished slippers, and good conversation. Sometimes it comes with ocean waves and wind whispering through trees under a dimming pink sky. Sometimes it comes at the cottage, sometimes it comes at the park, sometimes it comes in the morning, sometimes it comes when its dark…
But whenever you’re lucky enough to transplant your brain to the center of the flames it’s always an escape from the world… and always an escape into
AWESOME!
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I spent a better portion of the last ten minutes staring into my lit three-wicked candle. I love looking at fires. They’re always the same while constantly changing. Bizarrely mesmerizing, for sure. Word to the cavemen.
Living in the mountains in the country in the winter, we can get some pretty nasty storms and LONG power outages. One time was nearly 72 hours and it was -20. No contact with the outside world can be frightening. But then, we light the wood stove, the lanterns and camp out, comforted around the fire.
Fire inspires great goose bump stories, transports you to colourful memorable places and ignites love.
We love to have together times around our indoor and outdoor fire. It’s especially beautiful to see the glowing eyes and about everyone gathered around. Fire gazing is very awesome!
…and flames dancing about everyone and vise versa memories too:)
Clarified as mud?!*
This is the only reason I joined scouting.
Okay, that’s a lie, but it’s probably the most useful skill I got out of it. Staring into fires.
Alright, that’s a lie too.
I love your post! Thanks for a chuckle today!
Staring into is awesome, but perhaps even more so is building the fire and taking care of it – especially if it’s a big bonfire and you have to carry huge chunks of wood to keep it alive.
We used to secretly make little campfires on my backyard when we were kids. We’d spend hours just keeping it alive and watching it. Thankfully no accidents ever happened but it was so exciting and we never got caught.
I have a huge bunch of good memories involving campfires. Thanks for making me reminisce.
I taught my niece and nephew how to build a camp fire, I am very proud of this for some reason. I used to love splitting wood with an axe too..but I no longer have a fireplace. Bummer.
SWEET!!
FIRE!!
Yes! The magnetism of Fire is universal, and it is exciting to share that with the next generation. Whether is it a campfire far from civilization, the wood stove in the living room, or simply a candle on the coffee table, watching the flames dance symbolizes life itself. Thank you Mr. Caveman!
Yes! I have to admit that I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.
P.S. Picking up a lit sparkler that someone dropped on your shag carpet results in spark-shaped burns.
Shag carpet? Where do you live, the 70’s? ;)
Well it’s more of a shag area rug. It’s orange and awesome and feels good under your toes…I don’t know why they ever went out of fashion…
I just had a rather crappy week and this post reminded me that life is good because sometimes, when good friends and loved ones hang out, the weather’s right, and the location works, there are campfires. I’m sure that’s the only reason we were given noses…so we could smell fires…mmmmm. And looking into those fires and feeling the warm zing on our eyes? Awesome!
My brother has his flat screen TV mounted above his fireplace. At Christmastime, he had the fire going, and the TV set to the fireplace channel at the same time. Double-decker fires to stare into = awesome.
There’s a fireplace channel?!?! They really have thought of everything :)
Yes! Every so often a hand appears to throw in another log, or stir the coals. It’s a bit creepy.
Oh my god! That’s very strange. Ha!
Awesome! When I was a kid, my brother and I would watch it for hours, waiting for the hand to appear in the shot to move the logs or add a new one.
Seriously, we were just posting about the creepy hand at the same time! ha ha!
Lol! Great minds, jdurley…
Yay! I love fire! :)
That sounded a little creepy…
Maybe it’s because of the name.
YES, YES, YES!!!
I love fire! And that picture of Tom Hanks at the end is awesome in itself. :-)
FIRE! I make FIRE! (((thumps chest)))
Oh wait. Dang. Fire out.
(Drives to Whole Foods for self-lighting logs.)
Yes! A fire in the backyard pit with marshmallows toasting and chocolate and graham crackers on standby, nothing beats it.
I recommend strongly a wonderful story by Jack London: To Build a Fire.
Several years ago, I attended a lecture by a sci-fi author (whose name I forget–sorry it was a long time ago!). He spent a lot of time talking about where we are as a society and where we’re going. At one point he said (and I paraphrase),
“Think about what we as humans spent our days doing tens of thousands of years ago. What did we do? Well, we gathered food and hunted, we ran around a lot, we made things, we spent time with each other talking, making music, and having sex. We spent a lot of time looking at fire–definitely something we don’t do enough of nowadays. And you can argue that all the technology that we’ve developed in the modern world is just an attempt to replace what we’ve naturally been doing forever.”
When he said, this, I automatically thought about the magnetism of glowing, flickering, TV screens. They’re really just wanna-be fires (and wanna-be story-tellers), and they don’t really hold up that well under the light of comparison. I’d prefer a good, long fire-staring session any day!
This awesome thing does me thinking about my summer vacation two years ago. In that summer I got 16. I was with my mother in France and there we met some people at the place where we’d stayed. On the evening of my sixteenth birthday, there was a campfire with all the people that were at the camp. We had an amazing evening, we had seen a lot of falling stars, we have sit there a long time and talked the whole evening. We had some hot chocolate and some self-made cakes. Sometimes I stared at the fire and thought that it was such a wonderful night. It was very late when we got to bed and it’s almost getting light. It is a vacation that I’d never forget. We don’t have any contact with the people we met, but I have them as friend at Facebook. Sometimes I see pictures and then I think that is was a beautiful holiday, with lots of sun.
i know what it’s like , getting the wood , cleaning the fireplace , and placing the wood upon remembering you forgot to bing the little wood for makin a fire , you still try doing it without it and it fails so you go after the little one’s and do it again but right this time , so you put a lot of time in it and spend all your time drifting off , staring at the fire upon suddely remembering , damn i had food on the cooking-plate
This does me thinking about a evening of last year summer when i was with some friends at a house of a friend .There we made a campfire by using blocks of woudand some rocks to bake of the woud. We than drinked something and eat some burgers. Its a day that i never forget.
the fire gives me a calm feeling, it relaxes me. It also reminds me of my camping trips with my youth movement, the moment when we all come together and sit by the fire, talking with each other . you feel a deep connection with your friends, and the warmth gives you a save, sleepy feeling. But fire van also be dangerous at te same time, those little sparkles coming out of the fire aren’t always save, they can leave terrible brandmarks on your clothes.
FIRE!
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Make me think of fishing and sitting in front of the fire and just having that
great family time.