#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Meadow Grass

We used to burn the field. In front of our house on Brush Hill Road where I grew up, in the years before my father had a riding lawn mower, in the years when he let the two acres grow into meadow, in the years when the five of us chased each other, we played with the neighborhood gang daily, for hours in the waist-high growth of grass. We used to burn. My father would choose a windless, rainless weekend evening. A controlled burn, with hoses and helpers, our neighbors, us kids. With a can of gasoline the fire would be set, men in baseball caps with metal rakes, would soberly torch the grass, and then, dowse the flames with hoses as our playground poofed to soot. For us, it was exciting spectacle, an excuse to be heated and riled in the early evening, as we watched the grass we loved to trample melt into wasteland. We weren't allowed to dirty our feet in the field of soot until, in spring, green shoots would appear, and our playground, revitalized, would rise up out of the ashes.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017