I Found Her in the Fire
Today I walked the hillsides where my forest used to be.
It has been eighteen months since the Carr Fire tore through our area. The land is soft and red now. Dust kicks up to my knees as I walk. The only evidence that remains of the forest are stacks of blackened trees waiting to be hauled away.
If you were to iron out the wrinkles of my mind, it would have matched this trail system turn for turn. The forest was my daily bread. For years I walked and prayed as the canopy of oak and pine shaded me. The horse chestnuts and blue manzanita gathered at the edge of the narrow path. When my life felt heavy or sorrowful, I was always comforted by the fact that the only thing I could see were the trees towering above and the bend in the path up ahead.
I shield my eyes from the setting sun and take in this strange expansive view. Hollow words spoken by well meaning people repeat in my mind. Don’t worry, it will all come back. Beauty comes from ashes. Fire is good for the land. I pass another stack of fallen trees and shake my head, bitterly.
This was not a good fire.
Good fires are controlled. They clear out undergrowth and protect the health of the forest and mature trees. They foster new life.
Our fire was the result of decades of land mismanagement. The undergrowth was left to grow thick, choking out any chance of survival for the trees that towered overhead. It only took one day, one howling fire, to destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Some areas burned so hot that the land will be sterile for years.
Claiming this fire was a good fire is not only untrue, it is reckless. Complacent. It soothes our collective conscience while more and more forests in California go up in flames.
I hiked these hillsides after the fire. The earth was baked and black and cracked beneath my feet. I walked haggardly, ducking under fallen trees, searching for something, anything, that had survived. My mask cut into my cheekbones making me feel smothered and helicopters flew overhead.
I walked for over an hour, and could not find one tree, or leaf, or pine cone that had not burned. Only smoke and blackness. I sat next to the dry creek, too shocked to cry, resting my hands on the ground, as if my touch could revive the land that I loved. But she was gone.
For months, I struggled to make sense of my grief. Our family had survived. Our house was miraculously spared. So why did I weep when I went outside?
It feels like I’ve lost a mother, I found myself repeating. It feels like she’s gone.
I stopped taking my walks. I closed my blinds. For a year I couldn’t muster up the courage to return.
Until today.
I am sitting next to the creek bed counting the few remaining dead trees rising like outstretched arms. The water has returned, bringing life. An oak sapling, a pinyon bush, a small part of myself.
I rest my chin on my knees and let the cold water slip over my fingertips. I watch a water bug skate across the surface of the water. Toads croak in their hidden muddy homes. I see grass at the water’s edge.
The earth is somehow managing to push up life through the mangled mess left behind after the fire.
She’s still here. Badly maimed, but still managing to bring me comfort, still mothering on.
She never left.
Realizing this shifts my grief. For the first time, rather than feeling weighed down by my own sadness, I begin to consider hers.
The terror this land must have witnessed. How horrifying it must have been to sit powerless as the fire stole away all of the life she had sustained for so long-her entire posterity- in one day.
And then I wonder how long it took for our Heavenly Mother to be separated from hers?
Was it one day? One lie? Did it happen at the fall? Or did the overgrowth choke her out slowly over the course of generations?
Did she feel the impending separation? Her breasts taut and engorged from weaning too soon? Did she know it was coming? This bad fire?
For most of my life, I have been told my separation from her is a good thing. A protection, even. For her and for me. A good fire.
I have never once thought to question this.
And yet.
The way this sunset soothes and swaddles me. The way the Cottonwood sapling bends toward the water. The way the tiny pines pop up proudly, like toddlers with bedhead, knowing they will be cared for.
The way this basin, like two cupped hands, has held me in all of its forms.
A longing stirs.
