on burning
Last week I went camping for the first time in my life. Okay, that isn’t entirely true—when I was in high school I worked at a summer camp and once a summer, for a weekend, we would take the kids camping. And once, I went camping with my sister and her friends in Maine. But those camping trips felt different—I was younger and resilient in a way that maybe I didn’t fully know, and they were often just for a day, and it was summer and warm and on camp grounds that were not particularly wild.
Last week I went to my friend’s Brontë and Jiordi’s home in Kashia Pomo territory for a gorgeous offering they have called Steal a Way and to bring in the festival of lights. We were camping camping, for a week, when it was cold and rainy (including during a storm!), with very limited service or access to internet, and it was really profound. There was so much that I learned, that I’m still digesting and still processing and mulling through. Part of the reason that we were there was to deepen in our relationship to fire, to learn from it, and to also learn from the ancestral ways of the Kashia people in how to tend to the land by using fire and a controlled burn as a regenerative process for the land, and to work with the land and fire to help protect sacred trees from being overtaken by a wildfire, and to be caught in the brush of neglect.
(a view from last week <3 )
Throughout the week I thought a lot about tending; and (as demonstrated so beautifully by Brontë and Jiordi), what does it mean to actually really sink into the process of tending. One of the first things that Jiordi shared with us was that if we listen intently enough, the land will show us where it’s at and what its relationship is with fire on any given day, and through that we could learn how to best tend to it. And how, like will all things, we couldn’t assert our will, or objective or desire over the lands’ or the fires’, we had to show up as active co-creators with both of these two profound (and holy!) beings in order to engage in a meaningful relationship. Because we were there at a particularly wet moment, the fire was a bit shy to start, and made a huge difference in how we were approaching the burns, what would catch, and how we could approach the trees and plants in a way that was intentional. We had to listen, to the land and the flame. We had to go slow, with the land and the flame, and also each other.
I think about so many phrases that we use—don’t burn a bridge, etc—that kind of demonize fire. And as someone who is quite young in my relationship with fire and as someone who prior to this week would not have thought of myself as having a traumatic relationship to fire, I was surprised by how much fear I had of fire and how many quiet stories existed in me about fire. I think even thinking about seeing images of fire in trees or in the woods and feeling scared—scared of the ruin that was happening, scared of the devastation, scared of something being so transfigured that it could turn to ash. But being there and seeing what we were doing, and also hearing some of the folks of Kashia lineage talk about fire and the ways that they’ve tended to flame ancestrally was really illuminating.
One of the things that I learned was that the chance of a wildfire is raised when the land isn’t being cared for intentionally, when there’s neglect of maintenance and things are being overcrowded and overgrown, often by non-native species. And that overcrowding and invasiveness of non-native species makes it not only harder for native species to thrive, but also makes up for more fire-fuel, which can mean when a wildfire comes through, if things have not been maintained or tended to, it’s more likely to catch, burn, and take over everything, including native trees that have lived for hundreds of years. One of the greatest proliferators of wildfires is neglect, and not actually tending to the land in a way that it needs, which includes intentionally burning away the overcrowding of non-native species, and allowing the burn to restore new life.
(yes, this about the land, but it’s also about so much more).
Burning, therefore, and actually allowing the fire to consume what needs to die, is what allows for such pertinent rebirth. Going in ready for the burn—with the right gear, with the months of prep and tending to the land and creating burn piled, with the right prayer, with the right song and anchoring and listening to the land—actually allows for the land to be healthy, for it to protect itself, for it to allow regeneration, growth, and ultimately healing.
It made me think about how many times I had been in a situation where, out of fear of burning a bridge, or hurting myself or another, I allowed to a relationship to wallow in neglect. And how in the wallowing, there was so much brushfire and built up resentment added that when a small flame was lit, everything exploded. It made me think about what would it look like to get better at tending to relationships in the same way we were learning to be in relationship to the land and fire—to listen, to be present for the slowness or sometimes fastness or intensity of how the connection is developing, to feed the fire when it needs to be fed, to ask for water when it needs to be contained, and to be okay to burn what needs to die, what needs to be burned away, in order to create ripe soil for something new to emerge.
On the drive back to LA from Brontë and Jiordi’s, my (new!—what joy at making a new and unexpected connection!) friend Irma was talking about the tarot card of temperance, and how an interpretation of temperance is actually calling in, or upon, temperance as a third entity that you can call upon to help a relationship. It also made me think of Sobonfu Some’s The Spirit of Intimacy, and particularly how a relationship exists as a third entity, something flowing in between, two people.
So, for example: say you are in a relationship with someone. There’s you, there’s the other person, and then there’s the relationship that exists between you. That relationship is what both of you make of it, and how you choose to honor it, how you choose to show up in it, how you choose to tend to it. With the right care, commitment and nurturance, it can thrive. With disconnection and resentment and a lack of safety, it can be overrun by neglect. If one person is pouring into a relationship and another person isn’t, it’s felt. And the survival and thriving of any relationship depends on how we actively tend to the entity between us, how we’re clearing it of debris and misunderstandings and things that might clog its health and longevity. And at any moment, we can chose a different path forward, we can call upon temperance as an entity, as an idea, as an archetype, as a beacon to help us. And when temperance arrives, we can thank it, we can show gratitude, we can build a relationship to it that honors and acknowledges it.
Temperance is sometimes the being that you call in to help, and when it arrives, you can thank it as an entity that you called upon. You can, of course, do this with any archetype. But it was so helpful to think of temperance that way, and relationships that way. As a third thing that exists between two (or more people), that requires tending to and grace, and sometimes, a burning so things can be healthier on the other side.
As we round out this year, the year of the lovers, I’ve (as always) been thinking a lot of relationships and love. But really, what is time? The year of the lovers goes on, as does the year of choice. Every day how we chose to show up impacts the rest of our lives, our relationships, the land around us, and our purpose.
I have fallen deeply in love with someone. I think about where I was emotionally at the start of the year—completely heartbroken, trying to find the courage to piece myself together and open up my heart again, after a series of draining situationships and relationships overridden with tinges of neglect, betrayal and a lack of reciprocity. And, a lot of my own fear and hesitancy to burn things away, to let fall what needed to fall, including the walls and blocks to intimacy that exist within myself. I feel really humbled and grateful to feel so in love with someone now, to have that love returned to me, to both be working to be vulnerable, to tend to each other and our relationship, and to just see where it goes from here.
It seems fitting that my year would end on a burn, that I would be thinking about how important maintenance and fire are for the longevity of land and relationships. It feels nice to allow things to burn away, and to step into something new.
I hope you all have a beautiful end to this Gregorian cycle, and I’m excited for us all to step into some sweet newness.