Retreat #1: Fire
On the last evening of my first retreat, I strike a match, igniting a fire so full of raw energy that containment seems impossible. Wanting a warm evening free of fire-tending, I put a compressed log in the woodstove. In short order, flames hurl themselves against the glass door. Long tongues of heat scour the air. The stove resounds with shotgun pops as if it will fly apart. A rosy light suffuses the entire cabin, revealing each corner, crack and cranny. I damp the stove down and keep damping it down, slowly, slowly. With the damper closed all the way, the log blazes stronger than ever.
The raging fire puts me in a dilemma. To someone else it may be obvious that you get help in a situation like this. I hit a brick wall every time I think about asking for help. My feet feel glued to the floor, my jaw locks shut, my heart pounds at my ribs. I wish someone would notice the glowing, sweating cabin and come see if I'm ok. Please, oh please, don’t make me knock on the door when Bill and Dorothy are relaxing at the end of the day; don’t make me disturb them. I didn’t realize that I felt so worthless, so un-entitled. My own humanness isn’t acceptable to me. I must be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and never, ever in need. Others can have their foibles and faults; others can inconvenience me. I face all that with the patience of Job and the smile of Madonna. But let me see those things in myself, and I shrink away. The realization shocks me.
At last, I grab my little flashlight and run down the hill to the house, ring the doorbell. Bill comes to the door. I’m out of breath with fear and embarrassment. I tell him the foolish thing I’ve done, and that the fire seems to be going too strong. Dorothy stands in the background, her eyes big as saucers. I want to justify what I did, want to ask them to let me come back in the future, want to promise that I’ll never do anything like this again. But I don’t.
Instead, I focus on Bill’s steady voice, his calm movements as he pulls on his boots. Then I turn and run toward the cabin. From a distance, it radiates an awful and powerful energy. I hear Bill coming up the hill behind me. I throw the door open and bolt inside. The flames attack the glass of the stove door like they want to get out. Bill runs in, sees right away that the door can be tightened down a little more, which he does. I start to breathe again because the fire backs off. He opens the damper halfway.
Bill pulls out a chair and sits by the table; I perch on the edge of the couch. He tells stories—fire stories and farm stories and local history—until the fire appears to be under control. He comes again at midnight to check on the state of things, goes into the cellar and adjusts the air flow from beneath the stove.
Eight hours after striking the match, after sweating every kind of sweat there is—the sweat of fear, the sweat of exertion, the sweat of exhaustion, the I’m-too-hot-sweat, the sweat of embarrassment—I sleep for a few hours. I wake to the ping-ping-ping of a cooling stove. Opening the blackened glass door, my night’s terror lies in a tiny pile of grey ashes, cool and whisper-light. The little black stove withstood its test.
When I lit that log, I wanted a slow-burning fire. What I got was a fitful night of anxious fire-watch and, although I didn’t know it at the time, a glimpse of the passion these solitary retreats would work in me.