
The Great Fire Mountain
In a time when the earth was still young and growing there were two hunters in the forest searching for game. They had followed the trail of a deer for many days and had traveled a great distance from their village, much further than they or any other villager had ever been before. When evening came and the sun began to slowly sink and darkness fell all around them they stopped to rest for the night. Huddling together for warmth they looked out over the western sky and saw a bright light glowing in the distant darkness, flickering, red, yellow and orange.
“What can that be?” said one.
“It must be the moon,” said the other.
“Surely not. We have seen many moons and we have seen it round and full and we have seen its shapes and it is not like we have seen before. Could it be the northern lights?”
“We have seen the northern lights and they are not like this,” replied the other.
“Whatever can they be?” said the other.
“Perhaps it is the fire of the Great Spirit and maybe he is cooking?” one asked.
“Perhaps he is angry with us and will punish us with flames!” said the other.
With nothing else to be done until sunrise, they sat up all night watching as the lights flickered red, yellow and orange in the western sky. At sunrise, they were astonished to see flames of red, yellow and orange flickering on the distant horizon and thick plumes of dark, blue smoke rising high into the clear blue sky. They had no idea what the flickering flames could be so they decided they would go and see. As they drew near they could see the flames and the smoke more clearly and saw they were rising from the crest of a steep mountain way off in the distance.
“It looks like a great mountain of fire, what shall we do?” said one.
“Let’s go a bit closer and see more,” said the other.
So they trekked on until they came so close they could see fire leaping out of splits in the mountainside and flickering around its peak like a fiery crown.
“It is a mountain of fire! This will be of great help to our people. Let’s go on,” said one,
They came to the foothills and climbed steadily up the sides of the fiery mountain until they stood right on its to top and looked down into its center and saw a sea of red hot molten rock with flames dancing across it.
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