Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Unwinding the Sun

Desiree has been wanting to burn a heap of branches and dead twigs she trimmed from the pines and willows lining the drive from the main road to our cabin. Yesterday, given a calm day with ample snow on the ground, she put a match to the trimmings.

Desiree enjoys a fire. As I warmed myself by the fire of her making, I thought again about Buckminster Fuller’s quote: “Fire is the sun unwinding from the tree's log.” Years of sunshine were required to feed energy into the limbs and twigs Desiree had stacked onto the fire.

The fire grew quickly, unraveling all those years and deconstructing every limb and branch submitted to the thriving flames. It’s astonishing how quickly we can unwind the sun—and equally surprising how good it feels to stand by, watching the flames scissor higher and higher, our faces growing pink with released heat.

Desiree Feeding Her Fire

—Mitchell Hegman

No comments:

Post a Comment