LATE AFTERNOON is my favorite time of the day. I mark my place in the book with a turkey feather, sit back and watch the slow strobe of the sinking sun through the laddered branches of the pine. Gradually, it is followed by the violet wash of dusk that bleeds down like a stain. This is magical time, when even on a brezzy day, the wind usually ebbs or ceases as if polite deference to the setting sun. I turn on a table lamp , and the distorted reflections in the window are like distant campfires. For eons, come evenings, people sat by fires. It's possible that sitting in front of a television at night has become a modern substitute. One cannot dwell or reflect in depth upon the images flickering on a screen, though. The images we ponder in campfires are nowhere like snapping sparks. As one sits and stares,these mind pictures coalesce, problems are resolved, plans formulated. The day,or even a lifetime, may be put in perpective. Campfires are good for the soul, for the heart,drawing trials and tribulations fromone's bones like a damp chill. A sense of well-being always follows a good campfire. The best campfires are ones shared with friends that last into the night, where the ebb and flow and even the volume of conversation follows the mercurial temperment of the fire. With each new log added, topics change; with the shift of light in the fire ring another person contributes to the telling It is true theater in the round , the improvisational script beyond the scope of any playwright. If the stories last until gray light and birds song, breakfast is the first order of the day, and there is nothing like bubbling eggs and bacon in a big iron skillet, with bread toasted on green sticks, and coffee brewed in a fire blackened pot. At night, the campfire seems large, a universe unto itself surronded by the outer dark; but with the swelling light, it shrinks and dies like the evening wind, in deferance to the rising sun.

Author Unknown ....but came to us from Richard Pane .....Thanks Richard