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In the chilly, velvet darkness, bright spots of flame stand out starkly. Small beacons of life and warmth. Some are larger and pull at my shoulders. Others are small and easy to ignore. But the beauty is unmistakable, and the magic. No one has had a chance to attack this fire yet but me. It is my fire. It is tamed now, but still burning hot and wild. I haven�t left it. I have tended it, attended it. The smoke still burns my lungs and causes my eyes to water. The fuzzy exhaustion makes my limbs move like I am underwater and my headlamp light creates but a spot of reality in this sunken garden of flame and ash.
From around me, an engine growls and its headlights are extinguished in the heavy coat of darkness. From it emerge three spots of headlamps, moving and bobbing like fairies towards us. Abruptly, people materialize, and James, Josh, and Eric emerge to sit beside our small campfire of pitchy log. That it burns alone and cannot be put out seems more like witchcraft than nature. We welcome the warmth with the credulity of the dead tired. Jeff reclines beside me, his eyes and face blank from lack of sleep. I stand, brushing off the ash and sink into the blackness of earth and sky, chasing straight into the heart of the fire and the long red flames that call me. Stumbling, with Matt in my wake, we come across two burning fence posts and poke at them with more curiosity than real interest putting them out. It is the hours between midnight and dawn, when the dew falls and we cannot think clearly. Returning to 162�s crew, we find only the crew people playing with light sticks in the second fire hole that we found.
It is magical, mystical, and very special, the memory of staying the night at the Striker Butte fire overnight. It was like a dream, a very strange dream that I cannot fully understand. However, I wished to recall the feelings and some of the activity, when there was some.
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