the light and the warmth consuming the wood, the smell and the crackle and the heat hitting your face, that you can’t look too close at it except after a while when it’s started to die down and the heat ratchets up impossibly you can sit and stare into the core of the fire and see entire worlds forming and melting in the ash, and if you wait long enough the rest of the world starts to creep in the edges of your perception, all rustle and buzz in the dark, the peek of stars from above the treetops and you know that you are never truly alone in this world, and that that can be a terrifying prospect. or maybe you and those with whom you’re watching the fire die down can harmonize an improvised chord, deep and old, befitting the trees around you and the act you’ve undertaken, an act that speaks to something deep and old about being a person, something we don’t get much of these days, and that I think we might be all the worse off for, and that chord bends up to the sky dotted with stars, awash in the haze of the Milky Way, and you think well maybe anything truly is possible in a world where true beauty is as simple as looking up.