Prompt Entry 3

Winter Solstice

On the Winter Solstice, Kurt told me they’d start the fire in his back yard just before sundown.

I shed my responsibilities at the office for Christmas break, left the roles that I play locked behind the door until January. The holiday schedule would soon have the same pressures and time restraints as the work I just left behind. Both schedules gave me black and white dreams.

The sun hung low, just over the roofs of neighbors’ homes. I headed out to Kurt’s house, a small, freshly painted white home with a tomato-red door. Wild, untamed native flowers and plants covered the narrow patch of land between the home and sidewalk. An arc of Tibetan prayer flags hung by a string at the front door. Turk’s cap, with their green, heart-shaped leaves and cardinal red blooms, swayed in the evening breeze, and wild petunia, with water-color violet chiffon petals, almost hid a narrow path with overgrown ferns that led to the back. The sun paused over the horizon; a golden glow infused the negative space between the trees. I followed the direction of the smell of burning wood. I could see the flames in the distance of the long, narrow land, but no path led to the fire. I felt I was walking through virgin forest. My feet searched for a path as I waded through erect and thick ferns that covered the thicket. I shuffled my feet as if I were checking for sting rays in the ocean sand, but couldn’t find smooth ground. I forced my mind to erase thoughts of snakes. I walked with large steps over the greenery toward the warm, earthy smell of burning wood and then burning sage. I felt as if I had entered Eden through a porthole on the side of the house. Tangerine trees punctuated the wild forest area, closely intertwined with young white oaks and magnolias. I carried store-bought tangerines in a brown paper gift bag, with a tied, red ribbon. Even this simple gift seemed unnatural.

Kurt gives the gift of himself, unadulterated and honest. Once my professor, and now my friend, he inspires by guiding without force. Some students are lost without structure, but his abstractness can inspire if willing to follow up on his references. Within a course on Native American literature, Kurt will also discuss Tibetan Buddhist chants to illustrate the sacredness of sound in cultures. In a Senior Seminar course for English, Kurt began with oral storytelling, focusing on cultures’ collective stories rather than individual authors. Sometimes, as his student, I felt lost. After the class was completed, I was transformed.

I found my way to the group unscathed. Kurt was stoking the fire with a large branch when he turned to smile at me, largely, warmly, and welcoming. I joined his wife and daughter who were making prayer flags for the sweat lodge. We ate tangerines off the tree, throwing peels and seeds into the fire. Once the stones in the fire were white hot, and the sky turned indigo, we celebrated winter solstice in a round hole in the ground, covered with a tarp over a frame of tree branches. Yasmin and I tied the prayer flags inside the lodge. The hot stones were placed in the middle pit of the lodge for the purification ceremony. Prayers were not limited to Native chants. Kurt’s wife sang songs of the blessed Mother and Christ. Friends prayed for the past and upcoming years.

As I walked out of the primitive woods that night, onto the road, and into my car, I wanted to hold the pure feeling from the woods throughout Christmas and through the year. I wanted to hold the wind. I wanted to hold the sky. I dreamt that night in vivid colors.