Burn, Baby, Burn

Sometimes, things just seem to find us and we wonder to ourselves if we'd been sending up flares all along. 

I'm thinking that's the case with this Tuesday, when I'll head into the Bohemian Alps to help a stranger with a controlled burn of the prairie.  It's something I wanted to do a year ago at Pioneers Park, but burning a prairie is kind of like hot-air ballooning--very persnickety, weather-wise.  And if you aren't able to drop everything and come right away, then the prairie burns without you.

Not this time, though.  Not with a week of Spring Break stretching out before me. 

And I'll be honest with you.  I could use a little burning.  In fact, I'm thinking of it as more of a "Phoenix rising" event than a prescribed burn.

I just hope my Phoenix feels like getting up from the ashes.

Maybe it's because we're knee deep in Lent, but these days I seem to have ashes on my mind, if not actually on my forehead.  I don't even really do anything for Lent, except fail.  Even when I was a devout Catholic, I was lousy at the practice of transforming myself for a few days. Give up candy and it's all I could think of.  And cram in my mouth, one after another.

But, while walking with Finn around Holmes Lake this morning, I realized that Tuesday's prescribed burn was just what the doctor ordered.

Every day, I'm surrounded by people who are deeply generous, riotously funny, and all-around inspiring.  And, while I occasionally have such moments myself, I feel like I need a Phoenix moment, a chance to shake off the doldrums and reinvent myself.  I'm thinking Jane 2.0 could kick it up a notch and stretch a bit more.  Be more present.  More giving.  Just more Jane. 

So, come Tuesday morning, after I've laced up my 1983 hiking boots, pulled up the jeans, buttoned a shirt and found a hat to wear, I'll head just west of Garland to meet a group of people who are there to burn up some prairie to give it a kick start.  And I'll let them think I'm there to help the prairie, too.

But I'll have my own little truth tucked away in my jeans, a yen to burn off some of my own overgrowth and start over again.

And then, I'll walk towards the fire line, and let the heat lick my skin.