Fireplaces Date Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 03:22 PM PST Topic Beauty The air is so thin in the mountains it can make the veins in your neck thump all the way up to your ears when you're used to six feet below sea level and air so thick it bleeds when you swipe at it. I was used to this at one point though; much younger was my blood and maybe better suited to adapting like this. It's not good because I was moving furniture for people I loved enough to want them not to cripple themselves by moving it, and the drums of blood thunder in my head as if drummed upon by gods of Olympus, moving up the steps of the house. It was done finally when the snow came en masse, dropping out of the sky like slowed crystal raindrops with pure white light shone through them. Just in time to relax by the fireplace again and watch things outside become coated in thick layers of it that made the trees look like dark towers with white, globby arms reaching out and occassionally dropping to the ground in cascades as the snow piled on too heavy for the branches to support. It's funny to watch a predicted miracle; somewhere in your mind cynicism shouts at the side of you that is relaxed and alleviated that it was going to happen any way, but the alleviated side just reminds you that it is a miracle. A miracle simply because people had hoped for it because it was a bad season for tourism and just extending it was the only hope of squeezing pennies out of the pockets of the rich come to take vacations among pine trees and cracklings fires and ski clothing so thick you're hot 6 feet under the marauding snow. It feels like something so perfect and comfortable sometimes, at night when it snows. My father- an old man now- who lived his life to the fullest but still denies it every day, sitting beside the fire in clothes that he's had longer than I have been alive with a book older than both I and my sister rested on his lap, with his head lain back against the edge of the chair with a tear in his eye. Tears of every emotion because this has been his dream for a long time in life, and six years without a fireplace can be hard on a man who's gone ten years with one. The book could be anything from his old collection that brought dust and tears to my room back when I did not read them and ignored them on shelves- Treasure Island, Holmes, The Odyssey- I never read these things he treasured enough to try to push on me. Now he reads them quietly to himself and burns the fire for hours. It's neccessary up here, too. The insulation on the windows is bad, so the heat flees during the cold nights out through thin glass to nowhere. But you can still sit by the heat of the fire and laugh and watch it with people you know. And some times you can just watch it alone and remember the first time you sat by one. "It's good to warm my bones beside the fire" Pink Floyd, Time This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=291