Romancing the Flames

The flames were already dancing before I ever reached for the camera. It was a crisp winter's night, a small pre-Yule gathering around a bonfire with a couple of close friends, the moon and stars burning bright and cold overhead.

I sat and watched the fire move the way only fire can, restless and alive, and felt something rise up through the soles of my feet: the hum of the earth itself, a vibration that climbed my legs and settled into every cell of my body until I could feel myself vibrating along with it.

There, wrapped in a deep sense of connection to the earth beneath me, the moon and stars above, the friends beside me, the fire in front of me, I understood the pull for what it was. The flames were beckoning, enticing me into their own brazen romance of elemental design.

I didn't move quickly. I never do. I sat there a while longer, entranced in that dance, pulled slowly toward the flame until I finally reached for the camera, then waited, calm and patient, for the fire to tell me when it was ready to be photographed. Only then, born of music that played somewhere only in my own soul, did I set the camera down and step into the dance myself, into the romancing of the flames.