Fires in the Night
Wording of this Handout:
One gloomy evening, when the sky was heavy with grey clouds, I grabbed some paper and matches, and headed out the door.
My daughter Tamlyn came bounding along too, and Jenny, my wife. We got in the car, and headed down the road for about a minute, then took a shingle road down to the nearby Stream. As the darkness closed in, we gathered sticks and branches, and stuffed some newspaper sheets under them, then I let Tamlyn light the fire.
It was smoky at first, but soon the flames were licking with their bright tongues, and the wood began to blaze.
We stood by the fire for a while, watching it devour the sticks. The evening became night, and a pale moon swam through the thick clouds.
All around us we could hear things. The stream tumbled and chuckled, the geese honked far away, a distant sheep bleated, and some invisible frogs churrupped.
"Look at the spark-people!" said Tamlyn. She pointed at the bright sparks, which sailed high into the blackness and winked out. She stirred the fire with a stick to make more tiny lights whizz upwards.
We stood by the fire for about an hour, stoking it, and standing with our backs or our fronts to it, trying to keep the wintry cold off our legs.
Finally, it was getting late, and thoughts of the warm fire at home, and some supper made us head back to the car. I sat in the back seat, with Tamlyn cuddling against me, and our heads full of happy memories, as we jiggled back up the shingle road in the dark.