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RING OF FIRE
February 23, 2010
When I was a boy, I started a forest fire. It was an accident. I stole a box of matches from the kitchen cupboard where my mother kept them, filled a bucket of water, and journeyed off into the woods behind my house in the rural South Carolina town where I grew up. I must have been about ten years old. Maybe eleven. I had no doubt I could start a bonfire and control the flames. I was a boy, and that is something boys innately know how to do, right? It’s like primordial. The fire in a boy’s bones. My bonfire was beautiful and secret. It’s smoke signal my soul visualized before me. Until my mother called me out of the woods to accompany her on an errand in town. I poured the bucket of water over the flames and watched them die. I kicked dirt over the blackened mound. All was still. I was sure. I left… When we returned and pulled into the drive, I could see there in the distance the ring of flames flickering between the trees. Neighbors had begun to congregate in the yard to gawk. I was filled with an excited shame. I ran into the woods and began to stomp the flames with my feet. My white little boy sneakers melted and turned black. My mother screamed for me to come back. But I never did. Somehow, we manged to extinguish the flames and save the forest and all of its creatures, but my boyhood perished in that ring of fire. If I were a stylist to mother nature, I would dress us all in rings of fire. Knitted top with slit side by Rick Owens (Browns), Chatac Ectabit jean (Atelier NY), Chronicles of Never brushed black metal pendant (Oki-ni), Swiss Army Camper Knife in black (SwissArmy.com), storm proof matches (REI), Creative Recreation sneaker in white…watch them melt into the forest floor.