Archive for June 30th, 2008

Winter Bonfire - a family tradition

June 30th, 2008 -- Posted in Musings, family | 5 Comments »

I was lucky enough to do most of my growing up in the country. Now, by country I don’t mean way out there - but we always had a good couple of acres for me to scarper about on. One thing that tends to happen if you have property like ours, which has a lot of wattle trees, is that you end up with a few dead trees around the place. Now, my parents have a fireplace, and they use a lot of the wood to warm their home in winter - but there is always too much, plus a lot of scraggly bits lying around.

So, once in a while we would have a bonfire. Over time, they’ve occurred more regularly, and we tend to have at least one each winter now. I was visiting my parent’s last night, and as Dad and I finished working on my slowly-coming-together bookshelves for the afternoon (well, mostly Dad working and me turning the garage vacuum on and off as he sawed wood with his circular saw… not to mention the escapade with the radius - I know that makes absolutely no sense - now where was I? Oh yes :) As Dad finished working on my bookshelves, we noticed a noise, and a light. Mum had started a bonfire up the back.

So, we ambled up to enjoy the fire. After a minute, I ran down to the house to grab my camera. As you may have guessed by now, I’m a bit fond of photography, and you’ll no doubt see much more of it in future. This was a scene not to be missed, as the fire burned in the quickly dimming evening. But, as they say, a picture tells a thousand words…

Setting fire to the evening.

The nest of the fire

The close-up

Fire truly is an amazing thing. Its discovery propelled us out of the realms of mere animals, and harnessing its power has enriched and supported our lives for millennia. I think everyone should take the time, once in a while, to just sit staring into a fire - it’s certainly a good tool for meditation, and for realising the transitory and transformational nature of everything. What was solid becomes dust and vapour, and both go to play their next role in the symphony of nature.

A lovely example of the First Law of Thermodynamics - ‘Energy is never created or destroyed, just transformed to another state’.