Tending the Fire, Part One

Time-Place-Rituals

Summer Solstice, 2025

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The sun has been playing hide-and-seek with the clouds since early morning, and by now, six in the afternoon, he is nowhere to be seen. The house is dark, S is asleep on the couch, and I, restless, tiptoe on the balcony. The distant rumble taunts me. Why don’t you come out and play with us? Thunder booms and laughs. I grin and show my teeth—overcast is my kind of thing.

Back inside, I pack my bag and kiss S goodbye. I am going uphill, I whisper. You know where to find me.

The light seems in a hurry to withdraw for the day, impervious to any calendar and the many disappointed humans who chase the sun’s arc with religious zeal twice a year. I walk briskly. Swifts fly overhead, their high-pitched cries louder than the passing cars bring to mind Tyson Yunkaporta’s swifts and ants—rain is coming. But I have work to do, love magic is not for the faint-hearted.

As soon as I step on the hill, I am overtaken by the smell. The trees, the crisp pine needles, the medick shrubs with their seeds hanging like gold earrings on bare limbs, the asphodels’ blond tresses spilling over the slopes, the remaining stalks of dried mallows, white mustards, rockets, mulleins, and of the countless plants that spread their lush carpet on the hill till early May, now cut in fear of seasonal fires—all emanate, along with every grain of the auburn soil, the heavy scent of rain that falls somewhere else. I breathe in greedily and walk towards the Sentinel.

Stationed at the northern foot of the hill and adorned with sun lichens, he keeps good company with Pine. From his vantage point, a little higher from the trail, he watches people come and go with their dogs, their joints, their worries. People pay no heed to the lump of rock that juts slightly above eye level, and even if they do, they don’t see him. No wonder he is there, hidden in plain sight. Whether you reach the hill from one of the two eastern entrances or the northern one, you end up on the same path. Walking that path counter-clockwise, you can’t miss him. Whether you choose to look for him is entirely up to you.

Of course he is not the only one; more of his clan lie scattered around the hill, loners or odd pairs, remnants of old time. Don’t expect me to give away their coordinates, I’ve said too much already—they are not sightseeing marks to be checked on a map, they are … no, I am not offering you this on a plate. You need to walk on your own and be open to the magic of the place, or else they will remain rocks forever—they are good at being themselves.

Now that I’ve given you my secret away, I promise to give you also a chance to rest. We’re nearly there, follow me.

Voices echo up ahead, and as I reach Sentinel’s post, they retreat into form. A few tourists chat with a local girl whose silent dog bounces around them. Enough with all the talking, pleads with sparkling eyes, and rushes at me, tail swinging furiously. A big boy he is, reaching up to my waist. A pup really, his lady friend says apologetically. Don’t be afraid, he wants to play. Aren’t we all? I mumble and stroke his head. I let them be and climb to greet Sentinel, unable to hide from him the irritation that their presence fuels in me. Patience, he tells me, they will leave soon, they always do. A pang of guilt makes me falter. I, too, will leave—how soon is soon for a rock?

I bring flowers, those I gathered on the first day of May, those I arranged in a timid bouquet and hung them on my study wall to dry. The room feels empty without the flowers, the world hollow without mum. Yet all is full of love. As much as I try to recall the darkness of those early days, I cannot. It is already transmuted and solidified into something more substantial—life.

Life seems absurd lately, and my little pocket of peace, an insubstantial speck that shamelessly remains afloat despite the tidal surge that sweeps the continents.

Moving my fingers over the soft flesh that covers my cheekbones, I wonder what it means to be human and why, at this particular moment, rock seems more accessible and yielding than my own species.¹

I place the flowers under two stones, and the crushed leaves of sage offer their scent to the air, mingling with the ever-present rain. The sky is silent, no thunder, no swifts. No people—soon has come and gone. No ‘I’ fretting and darting inside the skull; bone is porous, so is skin, so is limestone.

[Everything Everywhere All at Once]. ²

…

to be continued

1. Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, Pantheon Books, 2001

2. The Time Traveler’s Wife’s Husband, by Tyson Yunkaporta | Emergence Magazine