🔥The Silo Fire. Community & connection… through chocolate?
When you arrive at The Horse Shoe Farm, and make your way to the home or loft where you are staying, you’ll find a “s’mores kit” waiting for you.
This may sound like softball attempt at adding something “fun” to your experience at The Farm, and in a way I guess it is, but it’s certainly not the whole story.
Tonight, a guest messaged us and very kindly asked “when we would be lighting the fire?” They have been here for a day or so, and expressed how excited they were to make s’mores at The Silo Fire! This is a common message that we get.. “when are you lighting the fire?”
Typically, we light it at sunset, but sometimes it’s later.
You see, 🔥 fire symbolizes community, and I had a total epiphany about how the actual COMMUNITY of fire spreads and warms each of us, in ways that we don’t even realize. As I pulled on my largest, warmest coat and mentally prepared myself for standing outside in 30º, windy, mountain air… I had a selfish moment where I almost didn’t want to be the one that had to go light the fire. I thought about my coworkers and mentally tried to place the responsibility on them to freeze their buns off.
That’s when it hit me. Lighting the fire each night is just about the only job that MOST of us who work at The Farm have done. A sort of invisible community, tethered together by the responsibility of lighting the fire.
When I arrived, I was still tumbling around the idea of our “inner-farmhand fire community” while fumbling furiously with logs and kindling. 🪵 I was making my greatest effort to get out of the cold air, but cold hands are not always the most responsive! My wandering thoughts were providing ample distraction from the elements, and I found some contentment in the now familiar ritual of building this fire.
I thought that my epiphany was the greatest thing that would happen to me this evening; a worthy mental detour that provided both a meaningful connection to my coworkers, and a mind puzzle to “get me through” this chilling task. ❄️
Welp. The power of fire must have known that I was not properly appreciating what she had to offer, and decided to teach me a real deal lesson.
As I began to light the kindling, a silhouette of two guests rose over the hill and I snapped out of my swirling thoughts, and into people mode. As they got closer, I could hear excited shrieks and laughter when they realized that the fire was being lit!
My frozen hands, and my apparently frozen heart thawed in a mere moment. I hoped that the glow of the fire that was flickering to life, would illuminate for these guests a very genuine smile on my face. We started chit-chatting about how cold it was, how lovely the stars are, and ultimately… about the fire itself. ✨
These two wonderful people shared with me that they had never sat out at an open flame. Never.
My prideful, selfish, near unwillingness to come and light this fire as an act of “obligation” now felt SO small and out of place with the awestruck realization of what lighting the fire REALLY is… that it choked me up. This fire had brought us together. The want of a guest to experience this fire had quite literally gotten me into my truck, driven me to the farm, had me brave the elements, think the thoughts, see the stars, speak with these amazingly kind and excited people… and realize how much I take the beauty of this task for GRANTED.
The sound of the fire was the main talking point. They couldn’t get over what the fire SOUNDED like as it was burning. As water and sap evaporate from the logs, it makes a very soft, steady “sizzling: sound that is the greatest and most natural “tiny symphony” that you’ve ever heard. 🎵 Except that they HADN’T ever heard it. The warmth of the fire is full of heart-warming, community building properties too. As the fire finds its stride and the smoke subsides, we move closer to it in an attempt to share in the warmth that it creates.
At this point, my mind is jumping from thought to thought like a rock across a pond. There are so many connections here: The new Heart Warmer Journey at the stable spa (warmth & connection abound!), The Ponder Wander experience that’s available now and how we offer people the chance to leave the back fold of that card in the fire to be burned, the second pair of guests that has now entered the fire pit area and joined in the conversation… solidifying the power that fire has whether I recognize it or not!
And the best part… they were all clutching their s’mores kits. 🍫🔥
I existed in this moment overwhelmed with gratitude that I had been humbled down from a place of selfishness, back to the simplicity of the power of a s’more, a fire, a sky full of stars, and a circle of people who are all wanting to share in something that is REAL.