F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Travel

All Around The Fire Pit

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Dad's Fire Pit. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)
Dad’s Fire Pit. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)

What is it about fire that we so love?

I don’t mean all those massively destructive ones that ruin lives, but the far smaller, controllable ones that we love to sit or stand around and stare into.

The ones that seem to enrich our lives.

The ones around which we talk and weave stories and take in the crackling wood, dancing flames, and shooting sparks that fly off into the night?

I’ve read that fires bestow healing qualities to those who stare into them, and I do believe that must be the case. Maybe not so much a physically healing quality—but maybe so, who knows?—but certainly emotional and psychic healing. I love to hang around those kinds of fires. The fire pits…the camp fires. And my dad having one of these (I have to get one!) was really neat.

As the lot of us converged at my dad and stepmom’s place for our summer vacation and my dad’s 80th birthday, we hung out at the fire pit. Standing…sitting…trading stories. Conversation. Enjoying the night and the company (and Alek, Greg’s son, did a fine job of getting it started and keep it running—thanks, Alek!). On one of those nights, I stood and conversed with a friend of my dad’s who’s had a fair amount of paranormal experiences that he’d been wanting to talk about with me for some time. Every time we’d met, over the past few years, he’d bring up some really weird stuff…about how doors open or close without people doing it…or hearing footsteps in hallways while no one was there. That kind of thing. But he’s always been on his way, or we’ve been on ours. We’d always begin talking about the experiences, then would never really complete those conversations and I always got the feeling there was so much more he’d wanted to talk about. Anyway, it was fun finally getting to swap those stories in a continuous, uninterrupted conversation with him about both of our experiences!

But, it was also neat being in the “atmosphere” of the fire pit, where my other family members were also talking and laughing among themselves! While I was in conversation with my dad’s friend, I was also pleasantly conscious of the other conversations and laughing going on with the others, and it warmed my heart. Family members with whom I don’t get to see nor be physically around with much anymore, though we do communicate with in all the usual, technological ways of today. We were all standing and sitting in the backyard…in the night…around a warmly burning fire….

I felt the love…I felt the emotional and psychic “healing.”

What is it about being around fire pits?

I’m not sure…but I love it.

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Clouds!

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Cloud Watching! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)
Cloud Watching! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

I love clouds!

As a kid, I used to lie on the ground many a day and just stare up at them. Forever.

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a vacation to visit family in upstate New York, and on the flight out of Colorado, I looked out the window and saw these! They were incredible—pictures never do them adequate justice—and I just couldn’t pass them up! So, I took out my iPad and began snapping shots of the cloud banks we approached.

Also as I looked outside the Embraer-175, I also noticed how squeaky clean the aircraft was! In fact, it appeared near brand new. I loved how the sun glinted off the air frame and engine! But, upon closer inspection, I did see a bunch of splatter on the leading edge of the wing. Huh, thought I, what was splattered all over that leading edge? How high do insects fly? Well, a quick look into this as I wrote this post told me that the upper range can be about 6,000 feet, but most flies and bugs seem to hit their ceiling at about 2,500 or so (+/-) feet, depending on temperature.

Squeaky Clean! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)
Squeaky Clean! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

Of course, I also looked to the wing to make sure there were no…you know…creatures playing around out there with our aircraft (the Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”)….

Nope. Nothing there. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)
Nope. Nothing there. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

When we do these trips, I do, what I call, “Eating Across America.” This simply involves chowing down on whatever comes my way as I graze throughout the day, and traveling across the country is no different! I eat about six times a day, “smaller” meals (“smaller” to me is not necessarily “small” to you…), and on an aircraft, the pickins can be a tad slim, so I take what I can get! Usually I pack food with me, but this time things got away from me and I came empty-handed. Anyway, my “ingestion” can, however, be quite intimidating to the untrained observer. I’m a professional [in my own mind], so don’t try this at home. But, even to me, sometimes the aftermath isn’t pretty….

Grazing Across America (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)
Grazing Across America (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

So, here are the photos I took of the clouds we flew over! So beautiful and breathtaking!

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Merry Christmas, From WestJet!

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Okay, I don’t care what your thoughts on commercialized Christmas or Xmas are, focusing on Santa or on any religious meaning, this was really cool, what the Canadian airline, WestJet, did for some of its passengers. What the people of the company did. Read the story here.

As the article says, it’s nice to know that with all the bad out there, there are still those who try to do some good.

Do I care that it “only” comes at Christmas time?

No.

I care that it happens at all.

We like to bemoan, “Why doesn’t this kind of stuff happen throughout the year,” but do we really believe that, or do we just like to complain? There are all kinds of people and companies who do this kind of thing throughout the year, at differing levels of activity. And, sure, you could complain that it’s a marketing ploy. You could.

Orrr…you could just enjoy the caring and giving spirit of the simple act in and of itself and allow yourself to be swept away by the emotion of people helping people at all. About people trying to make the world a little better at all. About people trying to brighten other people’s lives at all.

And if you still can’t find it within yourself to see the good in people or this wonderful act, then maybe you should look at your own self and outlook on life and how your actions and thoughts contribute to making the world a better place in any way.

Oh, and WestJet says that since they met and exceeded their goal of 200,000 view (they actually got over 27 million views in a week), they are also going to donate holiday flights to charity.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

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Upstate New York

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Barnum Pond, New York
Barnum Pond, New York

Last week we’d made a trip to visit family and attend a retirement party, in New York State. We had a great time there, and it was shorter than our regular trips, but we weren’t there for sightseeing so much as attending my stepmom’s retirement party.

But…we did do some driving and checked out a “camp” (these are not tented affairs, but buildings, that NYS calls “camps”; I love checking them out, especially if they’re on water…) on an upstate New York lake, the McColloms Cemetery, and drove to Barnum Pond, off of Route 30. It was a great trip, our last for the year—and it’s been a great year for fun travel, with our South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming trips!

But, now it’s time to buckle back down on my manuscript work (have I said this before?!), and continue readying for the rest of what I call “The Holiday Season,” which starts with Hallowe’en and goes through New Year’s….

Ah, what a fun year it’s been!

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