When running away to an island in the off-season, prepare yourself for some time to think. Today the sky is a strange golden-grey and the rain patters against the windows as if playing music in a language I don't understand. I've done things here that I never do at home - like read the paper. Seriously. Morning light, coffee, and now I know everything about the park going in for children with disabilities, who's up in the local soccer stats, and the list of court appearances made me laugh. There was a lovely obituary for Robert Hellman and the letters to the editor were rather inciteful. An article titled "Why Fire?" caught my attention.
There has been a long tradition of 'fire ecology' on Nantucket dating back to the Native Americans who lived here previously and becoming dubbed 'controlled burning' in the 1980's. However, now after more science and study, the term used is 'prescribed fires.' Nantucket has open grasslands, heathlands, and middle moors, each of them needing an individual approach in land management. Sometimes the goal is to burn in a mosaic pattern to leave pockets of older growth; sometimes they need bare ground for new seeds.
I feel perhaps I am at a place of needing a 'prescribed fire.' Is there a doctor that could write that out for me? Maybe it's the time of year when everything is ramping up for the holidays; maybe it's just coming off a crazy busy month and missing my husband. Maybe it's having entirely too much undergrowth and deadwood in my life. I think I may need something to cut back the thicket and kill off some of the weeds. I could use a good clearing or some targeted, strategized combustion.
Do you think I might make some space...carve out a little elbow room? A meadow sounds nice.
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