The First Fire
A long overdue ceremony of fire management and right relationship in the jungle finally got to take place in rainy season.
Nothing went the way I expected this year; and certainly not when I expected any of it to happen. When we were finally the legal owners of our property and could begin the process of applying for permits in February of this year, I was told the process would take “a few” months. But it took a few months just to prepare the documents and a few more months to have additional surveys and other details requested. Then it took a few more months for the city to review our plans and here we are in September.
I’m not a terribly patient person, unfortunately, but it’s something I’m working on and I’ve had so much opportunity to practice during this process that you’d think it’d get easier. The problem is that while it’s sad that we can’t start construction on our house, it’s also just incredibly frustrating that we haven’t been able to even establish basic necessities like a driveway and a place to store our tools.
We were cautioned by our builder that there would be a site visit from the city officials to verify certain details of our plan and not to being any significant (i.e. noticeable) work because it might cause them to assess greater fees. So we haven’t been able to really do anything since we built the road, now nine months ago.
Around that time, at the beginning of this year, I cleared out the brush, and any little trees as thick as my thumb or less, from the build site and stacked the downed wood in piles. In Ep. 6 of The Postmugglism Podcast, “Ambassadors For Spirit,” I relate a story about my experiences clearing out this space, and how I did so without paying my respects to the lives I was taking, and was admonished by our jungle spirits for it.
At the end of that story I realized that rather than clearing any more space I needed to clean up my mess and turn the trees, vines, and brush I’d cut down into compost; to return their nutrients and their energy to the land.
But, I was afraid to do anything out on the land until that site visit took place and then after it did back in June, I was honestly just demotivated because of the heat, humidity, and general lack of progress.
Finally, on the last day of September, I made my first fire out on our property; which isn’t just cool and fulfilling emotionally, tending fires on your land been considered a crucial step in claiming the area for your home since time immemorial; which is something I talked about in Ep. 22: “The Enchanted Home”.
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