FIRE & EARTH & HOPE
"It's fire more fruitful than rich lands." (Dave)
Small and needy like a baby, beautiful in colours like a fox, warm like a beaver skin faster than a rabbit and more dangerous than a bear, uncontrollable.
Fire is the TV of wisdom and nature!
I remember this quiz, I think it was in Winnetou were First Nation children shall bring the most marvelous they know. One of them brings fire, because it has everything mentioned before and made human development possible.
Is fire dangerous or helpful? Beautiful or dangerous?
Like everything in life it's a perspective and how we humans use it.
Making a fire always brings me together and can be made a beautiful challenge if you try it with less help. Start it again out of an old fire from the last day just blowing away the ashes and light up the embers.
We have a stack at the moment here in the hostel and I love to start the fire in the morning. Not to heat the living room but to bring some wilderness, some beauty, some natural beauty, some good memories into the hostel - a friend I can invite and who always shows up.
Of course, can you start a fire with a lot of paper and just to have some more heat in the room, that's how most of the people seem to see the fire.
Or fire is art, meditation and entertainment all in one. A small fire is warm like love. You give it to the fire at the beginning and revive more after. The Disney song/film shows it quite well Lava (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4dTLJ9q9o)
Take the old ashes of the chimney and clean the window just to make the fire a little bit more beautiful. Go outside to take the wood in, some small birch wood to start it, some pine for the smell and some oak wood for the long life. Feel the beautiful feeling of wood in your hands, thinking about the tree, which lived for many years. What could we have built out of this beautiful wood, instead we burn it, almost a little bit sad if we don't honour it!
Start the fire and care about it at the beginning till it finally gets its temperature and is strong enough.
Closing the door of the stack because it smells, "stinks" like fire. Prison the fire. Losing already half of the warmth and the beauty of it.
Not a campfire but you're still bringing warmth and joy into the room.
A campfire outside, sitting around it with friends, talking about life and warm yourself always turning around because the back is already cold again and the legs are too close and burning hot. Playing some werewolf and making some stickbread or even some fish or BBQ beside and losing yourself watching into the fire all night.
Fires in Canada, California, South East Asia, South America and Australia have destroyed a lot of forest and even towns, existences and lifes. It costs millions of $ and kills so many animals. From New Zealand, you could see the smoke of the Australian fires beginning of the year 2020. Maybe a sign for a dark year or time. But we should never forget that in most of the cases us humans started the fire. The fire is just getting stronger and stronger, from a small little fire to an uncontrollable inferno, we don't have under control.
Hollow Coves - The Woods (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q466ZPyNAo)
Earth/ Ground:
"Soil is more important than oil." (Unbroken Ground, Patagonia)
There was an earthquake today in Wanaka, 5.2, so not too strong but still strong enough to feel it. What a feeling, if it would be stronger or we would have been closer to the epicentre, we could just have died in a second without any chance. No difference between poor or rich - so powerful! Just a little bit of shakin /snoring of the earth.
A burned place looks dark and dead but it is also an empty space full of opportunities and a succession is just a new start. A new circle of life. We have to accept a fire, the death of something, the change and can just help to build something new. Unfortunately, that's what is normally not happening. Agriculture , buildings, farmland and/or money are more important than a good healthy soil or a forest. "Why are you restoring the forest?" is like saying, "Why should you love your mother?" (Hinewai Reserve ).
If there is no forest, there should be a sustainable, diverse farmland.
"Nature loves diversity, humans always trying to centralize, commoditize everything.It's wrong!" Patagonia Unbroken Ground;
The Biggest Little Farm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biXdtbU155E)
Soil is often just seen as valuable to grow food. We use the rich soil to use it as farmland until it's not rich anymore and then leave it devastated till nature makes it rich again.
"If you go through life not embracing the complexity then you do not really try. It's a bit lazy, just accepting what's handed to us. There is no better example than food."
"You're what you eat!", so it's not only our responsibility, regarding the planet but also for ourselves.
Don't live by your own rules but in harmony with nature (Epictetus).
HOPE
“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.” (Martin Luther)
"Hope is the only thing stronger than fear." (The Hunger Games)
A Seed of Hope
A seed means always hope. To put a seed into the ground is easy, the waiting for the plant teaches us one more time patience and with the appearance of the first tiny little bit of plant and green in the spring we often connect hope and a beginning. A new plant, a new life, which can grow up to a huge tree. All out of a small little seed. How beautiful!
"I see you, I see hope!"
I can say that to a plant, to a tree or even to a person!
I was lucky enough that it was once said to me and it is still the biggest and most beautiful compliment I've ever got.
When I was on my bicycle, cycling back from John Muir's paradise, Yosemite, back to the coast and to the Surf City, Santa Cruz to meet some friends again. I was happy, the only thing was the way between some boring and busy roads, so I made a sign for bike hiking, if some car wants to pick me up to make it a little bit faster and more interesting but I wasn't in a rush. Anyways, the two people who stopped for me to read my sign, was a newspaper guy on a motorroller, who showed me a shortcut to the next campground and came by in the evening to eat pizza with me and a woman in a small car completely filled with stuff. She apologized that she couldn't give me a ride and gave me 5$. We talked and she had just lost her house, her job and had debts and didn't know at all where to go next. I wanted to give her the money back but she really wanted me to keep it. She wrote in my diary: "I see Hajo. I see hope!
I don't know her name, or what happened to her, but in 5 min of talking next to the dirty street she gave me everything. I hope the seed of hope in her growed again in her and she is doing good. I will remember this moment forever!
"People will forget what you said, what you did, but they will forget how you made them feel." (Maya Angelou).
Every single human has a message to give, to share, to listen, to learn and to grow!
Hope sustains us in difficult times. It is what motivates us to strive for our goals, whatever they may be. And it matters now, more than ever (Hope, Never Fear, M. Obama)
"It's not impossible to hope. Nothing is impossible" (On the Road)
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