There was Scott of The Road and Scott of The Woods before there was Scott of The Birdsongs. This week, Scott of The Woods made a rare return appearance (sans wildman beard, starry gaze and dashiki) and lit the first ceremonial fire in years. A very special fire pit was recently rebuilt out here at the nest by a good friend, and it was time to figure what to do with much of the cutoffs from the cypress plank I got after the Wimberley flood of 2015. I made instruments out of this tree, one of many, many hundreds of years old, that were washed away off the banks of the Blanco river.
Those lives and many others were affected, and I figured since I couldn’t fix that I’d take one lucky plank and give it a new life singing - perhaps it could represent the whole, and all others of all kinds, in the beauty that does emerge from tragedy like little seedlings given time. Feeling very reverent toward these cutoffs, I kept them. Made woodcraft from them. Looked at the box and wished peace to all whose lives were taken or changed forever, and to those around them – their circles. But there comes time it’s time to let go, and so it goes. I knew it would be fire – I knew it would be ceremony.
It was also time to fire up this remade pit and sit by it once again. It’s fun being Scott of The Birdsongs, but I definitely feel the pull back to the path of Scott of The Woods. If you’ve ever connected to the earth in a deep way as part of your journey, to sit around a campfire even as a circle of one brings alive something very deep. It’s never out of you, it’s never who you used to be, it’s never gone… it just sleeps. And he’s alive and well, this guy, in there, as if time had not passed at all. He is impervious to the aging of the body; he knows nothing of accomplishment or fame; he rises with the sun and settles with the darkness. He walks these woods under moonlit skies and listens.
I gave many thanks and blessings over this fire – including for all of you. Once there was a good bed of coals, I cooked food over it. The last of the energy of these pieces became heat – transferred into my food – which now nourishes and becomes part of me. As I put my energy into the building of the instruments of today and however many tomorrows, so will flow in some way now ripples from this tree, from those banks, from that river. Onward, inward, outward into new moments of magic and music shared - transferred - between souls in far away lands.
Seeing the black spread of combustion slowly consume the box into flames was like watching time consume the energy of a man. May it be burning my scraps, the best of me having been worked into other things.
Listening to: Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers, old dub reggae, Shawn Needham Alien Groove Therapy, the sounds of the woods and the fire.