The Dark and the Light held them.

The torch is but a distraction from being in the moment. It allows us to move into our heads, unable to see beyond the light in our eyes, causing us to stay in the tunnel that is the beam, this place of false security, which prevents us from venturing outside of the artificial light and into another world long forgotten.

The Dark and the Light command us to pay attention to our sense of place through our awareness of all things, from the rustle of the spider moving through the undergrowth to the blinking of an owl’s eye hidden in the foliage of the tree nearby. We need these things in order to help us understand our sense of community with Mother Earth.

"Do we need torches"? She asked one night as we were about to take the children up into the woods to build a fire under the cover of darkness. I answered "no, if we give them torches they will be off into the woods and we will have trouble keeping them together, the best way is to allow nature do the work for us, with their help".

So, off we set into the darkness, they followed each other in single file, some holding onto the person in front because they did not want to be separated from each other in the dark and in the woods. Once we reached the place we were going too, they set about building a fire in the darkness from the wood that had been collected earlier that day, there was about eight of them and the fire was built in no time. They had practised many times before in day light.

Out came the fire steel, it was struck several times, the char cloth caught the ember and held it ready to be transferred to the tinder bundle, blowing it into a reassuring flame it was transferred to the pile of wood that looked like a tepee, this was to be their fire. Up she roared, giant flames leaping two to three times the height of their heads, embers looking like firefly’s drifting off into the night air of the surrounding wood. Then out they came, the marshmallows, and as we sat warming them over the embers, the story telling began.

The fire had done its job; holding the children together while it listened to their tales and their laughter, keeping them safe and warm. Just as the darkness had done its job in keeping them together until they reach the safety of the camp fire.

Who needs torches when you have the Dark and the Light?