"Bring me the Blaze" is a phrase I've been using sparingly for several years but more recently of late as I'm sure you've noticed, so I thought I'd give y'all some insight into what the saying has to do with anything since I say it so much. It began on an AT trek where I was hiking with the first year scouts. The ones ahead came to a fork in the trail and did not know which path to follow. I told them about the white blazes that mark the AT and that there are blue ones for the spur trails. The blaze is a tool, but also a goal. One of them saw the white blaze down the one trail and told me about it. Upon hearing of the blaze, I told the boy to "Bring me the Blaze," meaning to go ahead and lead the crew down towards that direction until we reached the next blaze. I took a liking to the sound of it, and I still use it in this context whenever we head out on the AT, and tell my navigator or whoever's leading to "Bring me the Blaze." Then I began to say it whenever I wished to go to the hills, whether a trip was eminent or not. I'd be at school or at home and the call of the woods would hit me and I'd say it to whoever was there. Sometimes they would know what I meant and the next weekend we'd be up there. Other times they pretended they didn't know me. I began to use the phrase to describe more than just backpacking now, but it is always a direct order, often to myself. As I started working on my website - story time in particular - the phrase became like an invocation to a muse. If I got stuck writing or whatever, I would say to myself "Bring me the Blaze," and the words would come. Indeed the same is true of writing my Desk posts and the poems, though the poems weren't informally commissioned like the stories or the Desk. Later it came to refer to whatever I happened to want to do or have. It means I need whatever it is that will ignite the fire of passion in me. The meaning has not changed - it is often still a call of longing for the hills, as that has not changed in its meaning for me - but rather its meaning has expanded to include any of a number of things. Just like on the AT, the blaze is the beacon that marks my way. It is not only the trail marker, but the goal at the end. The blaze is everything I don't have inherently that I want, and the tool I use to get more. So what else is the blaze besides the hills? I'll tell you. You might say that if I'm the Dragon you ought not dismiss, she's the very Blaze in every breath to burninate the peasants. So burninate the peasants and bring me the Blaze!
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