Where There's Smoke

The vehicle with the plate FYR LDY, registered to a professional fire-fighter, was parked next to the High Moon Photo Gallery booth, displaying images, each different from the next, of curling swirling unfurling plumes of smoke against a coal-black background. Mary Moon (yes, I know) was coyly noncommittal revealing what kind of smoke was depicted, but the hit I got? Marijuana. Ms. Moon’s abstract photographs were reasonable priced, yet I’ve also seen stunning, massive enlargements, no different than Mary’s, exhibited at San Francisco’s MOMA. On youTube there’s a DIY video on how to take smoke pictures yourself. Which brings me to Elinson’s Law of the First. For example, we’ve all experienced just how readily burrs attach to socks when traipsing through a waning summer field. It took a Swiss amateur- mountaineer and inventor named George de Mestral, though, taking a nature hike with his dog, to put two and two together and invent Velcro.  Mark Rothko’s rectangular fields of color? Picasso’s bicycle seat bull? I could’ve done that. But you didn’t, did you.

Firewood is a hot commodity here at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park. $10 a wheelbarrow. At every camping site – and they number in the hundreds - there is a fire ring. You get the feeling that burning wood is part of the attraction. But what am I saying? Of course it is. One of the Four Elements, Fire will forever hold an allure for us humans. To be sure, fire is dangerous and destructive, but it’s also mesmerizing and magical. It provides warmth and illumination. Sitting around a fire resonates deep within our DNA. I am firmly convinced, and not the first to notice, that TV sets usurped fireplaces as the thing around which we Americans congregate; but it’s a faux warmth, an ersatz illumination. Wow, I just thought of something! What about a remote for fireplaces! Oh, it’s already invented. The gas control knob. Right.

Which brings me to my last point - the trend, especially in urban and suburban areas, of grandfathering out fireplaces. In other words, the hearth, as in hearth and home, is being phased out. Just one more thing that’s going the way of the horse and buggy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am well aware of the health concerns which underpin these ordinances. We do live in communities, not in isolation atop a mountain. But still, people.

So…even though the multitudes of little infernos fouled the pure Ohio air, casting a noxious, and possibly toxic, haze over the lake, as I strolled deep into the woods this last Saturday night, I was drawn back in time to the campfires of my youth. At night, always at night –  enraptured listening to ghost stories at sleepover camp; huddled around a ringed fire pit, still wet and sandy, at Playa Del Rey Beach; and of course, in anticipation, roasting marshmallows to perfection only to flatten them between two graham crackers with a chunk of Hersey’s chocolate.

S’more. I want some more.