• The earth was tired, clearly so...the sun laid its child to rest, putting the blanket of night over the california hills. The evning was its bed time story, beautiful tales of yellow, orange and purple took the clouds, but only for a moment, every summer night...A young woman with tangly dark blonde dreads watched her feet, hearing the gravel beneith her sandals, one after another up the side of the cliff that held the cement graffiti covered rock...clearly man made, the rectangle rock stood about two feet out of the ground...about 6x7 feet, randomly placed on the side of a cliff that overlooked the rolling hills, which whispered with mist as the evening took its course...
    The young woman and her group of friends gathered on the block, and doused their fire hoops strong-smelling tiki fuel, before dropping a match on each torch, watching as the flames danced off of each one.
    As children, we would watch from the bottom of the cliff as we rode our bikes along the trail, the twirling of flames above our heads...we never understood the meaning or beauty...we wondered why she played with fire, and never gave her a second glance
    But many years later, my curiosty grew, and one night I rode my bike up the crunching gravel trail to the graffiti covered block and spyed beyond the trees as she lit up each spine of her hoop, and spun the flames above her head...
    I silently creeped from the brush and sat beside the young woman on the edge of the block.
    "can I try?"
    she stoped her dance and handed me a hoop, one of the flames slowly dying out.
    That is the night, I discovered the magic of our elemtn "fire"