Burn

Tonight a good friend and I took a drive up past Hill's Creek Reservoir to get a night time glimpse of a new wildfire. We chatted, laughed and made a merry time of things. The glow visible from the road was eerie, beautiful and strangely comforting. Fire light has always had that effect on me. It got me to thinking. And brought me to blogging away.

What is fire?

Chemistry is one of my weaker subjects but from what is to be gathered from the scientific point of view is that fire is a complex bunch of chemical reactions. Combustion. Tada! Everything for sake of argument is a complex bunch on chemical reactions. To have fire you must have heat, oxygen and fuel. To live you must be created by a spark, fed by fuel and powered by air. Missing any one of those three key components leaves you without fire. And leaves you without life.

Fire is such a lively phenomenon. It is all chemical, just like everything else living. So what dubs it a non-living substance? It consumes, breathes and ultimately creates new life. The fire is alive.

The destroyer, leaving a blackened trail of death behind it. A terrible thing.

But what then rises from the ashes? New life. The nutrients left behind enrich the soils and foliage begins to grow back into the setting, eventually healthier than before. And when we die don't our decaying bodies give to the soil which allows the plants to grow, allows beings to eat, create new life and then once again those things die?

Aren't we the fire?

Doesn't the fire burn inside us?

Just another cycle of living, dying and rebirth.

(so what? this makes no sense. the need to ramble about something was heavy on my chest tonight. enjoy my insight)