This January night, the woods feel especially ancient, as we sat in the old well where the Earth couldn't handle her own weight and slipped and fell, leaving behind a heart-sized hole. In the middle of the well is a ring of rocks that's played host to hundreds of fires. On it's sacrificial altar are Christmas trees collected from around town, a pagan tradition from a Christian holiday that our rag-tag band of vagrants managed to pilfer. Twenty-eight of them to be exact.
Pines burn slowly, at first. Fire eats away at the needles, angrily pukes up gray and green smoke. Fire is always hungry through. Ask any of the people here, in these nearby Central Pennsylvania towns. People whose towns were build upon the digging of black bones, dark as night, from these mountains to satisfy fire's unsatiable hunger. It didn't work. These hills were bled dry in the attempt, and the fire lords, the coal kings who cared little for wild space, moved down the mountain and across the ocean, leaving these towns to dry up like honeysuckle on a summer windowsill.
Our fire roars on, and after it's needle-filled appetizer begins to eat away at the branches. The gnawing and cracking of bones continues. Flames shoot up in crosses, pillars, trees.
Throughout the night, beer flows, people talk and dance, and the fire roars on. This time of year, all of our trees bleed a lot. The blood released feeds everything from insects to pancakes to fire. Earlier today, I had cut my hand while trying to jump over a log jam. I patched up the cut with sap, letting my blood mix in with forest blood.
Eventually, like all things, it burns out.
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