WESTERN WISDOM Season 4, Episode 03 "Foxfire!" audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Cowboy halos and heavenly crowns. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.
"Foxfire Sunrises & Storms" blog post article found here: https://www.blybooks.com/2022/06/foxfire-cattle-drive/ Includes info on Foxfire movies and Foxfire Appalachian books.
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FOXFIRE
Stephen Bly
Circa 1995
When you get to spend a lot of time outdoors, you get to see a whole lot more of the splendors of God’s creation. Much more than the folks who live inside buildings.
This morning, for instance, it was about ten degrees, and I was out running around the frozen lake about daybreak. The sunrise started out a deep purple and orange. As those colors began to mellow, bright pink clouds fleeted across the crisp, blue sky. And then as the clouds began to stack up over in the East, half the sky turned fluorescent orange.
Now all of this lasted about five minutes max. I figured it was the Lord’s fireworks setting off the excitement of another day.
One of the God created splendors in the Old West was the foxfire on the big cattle drive. As they drove those big herds of cattle across the plains in the 1870s and ‘80s, they would hit some of the thunderous summer storms in the Indian territory in Kansas. These were the electrical storms with lightning flashes and sulfur hanging so heavy in the air that it was suffocating.
Sometimes in the darkness of such storms, the horn tips of the cattle, the ears of the horses, the hat brims of the cowboys shined with a phosphorescent light. It was an eerie glow right out of a science fiction story or a bad dream. It was called foxfire or St. Elmo’s fire.
One old-timer reports that every once in a while a certain crown of some cowboy’s hat would glow and it sure enough would look like a halo. Of course, it only stayed a few seconds. We used to kid them and say, “That’s as close to being an angel as you’ll ever come.”
You and I, of course, will never wear halos either. But we do have a chance to wear a crown.
The Bible says, “When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Peter 5:4).
Now I’m pretty much stuck on wearing cowboy hats myself. But I have a feeling I’ll gladly trade it for a heavenly crown. And that crown will come as a reward. Not for living a perfect life because we can’t do that. But this is a reward for those who have worked hard to obey the Lord’s leading after trusting Him as Lord and Savior.
It will be just one of the many thrills that will be waiting for us in heaven. And I’m sure the mornings up there will make cold morning sunrises and foxfire on cattle horns seem like only a dull, faded memory.