The evening sun skims its glow across the winter-fallowed fields as we drive through the Greendale farms and approach Yarrow. Bare trees stand softened, the blue sky fades and allows some mauve, some pink. Farm buildings relax into their pastures at day’s end.
My friend Peggy, her sister and I are going to the Ecovillage bonfire celebration, marking completion of the cordwood on the timber-frame house.
As we pull up, Shayne and his kids are gathering together barrow loads of wood scraps and dumping them into a pile for burning. Saw-horses for sitting on, saunter into a circle. Celebrants arrive and lay food and plates onto the table … there are bags of marshmallows and sausages. There’s beer and juice, too.
Parents sharpen the sticks their kids have hurriedly brought them, as the woodpile is lit and becomes a blaze. Marshmallow bags are anxiously fiddled with, and squeezed, by small hands.
I look away from the bonfire and up into the house that will be mine. James is still working on a last row of cordwood in a warm glow of a swinging light. He’s on a ladder and reaching up, smoothing the concrete between the pieces of wood. I’m hoping he’s pressing his thumb into the mortar to sign it.
The children find more pieces of suitable burning wood for the fire and come running, laughing and breathless. They stumble, almost fall …throwing themselves into their throwing… so near the flames that a mum’s heart is in her mouth. But the wood lands where it should, in the fire, and a child remains safe, unburned.
Yonas stands up to mark the occasion and talks of the ‘temple’ of the house that’s been made by a wonderful serendipity, by hand, and by collaboration. He names the people who have brought it this far. We clap and cheer for them, and the builders’ fine work.
I am on the quiet side of the fire, resting in a canvas chair. Oh, I love the presence of dancing flames! I am most content, watching. A small chatterbox boy climbs into my lap. He talks of trains and sticks and stars and other ‘badder’ boys, willing his eyes open until he cannot any longer. I hold his sleeping body tight and look across the circle, to faces warm in conversation, or quiet and smiling, gazing into the centre, watching the flames, as I am.
Marshmallows burn brightly and then blacken and flame out on the ends of sticks.
Sausages dangle over the fire. Shayne’s has fallen twice into the sand. He wipes it off on the grass with the hand that isn’t holding his baby daughter, and tries again. Cher gives me a S’more… graham crackers, melted marshmallow and chocolate. One is just enough, is perfect.
Then Joe, for fun, leaps and dives through the flames and lands singed and triumphant on the other side. Tom tells me he did that stunt as well, when he graduated from high school. I would have liked to have witnessed that, too.
A sleeping Eli is collected from me, thrown over his Dad’s shoulder and carried off to bed. We pack up as the others do, and head home.
And my heart stays.
