All I have to do is look up from my computer screen and a riot of color awaits me just outside my window. I recently drove into the national park to enjoy the colors, but aside from a visit with the pygmy goats, all I was searching for was right in my own neighborhood. I like to watch the leaves falling - especially the oak leaves as they do their spiral dance. I've always loved autumn (even if my joints do not agree with my preferences)! A few minutes of looking at my neighbor's tree through my window and even my cranky knees quiet down...
Autumn and falling leaves - trees preparing to rest for the winter. Some see autumn as the season that hearlds death (after all, those falling leaves are no longer alive). Halloween is rooted in our ancient ancestor's belief that at this time of year, the space/boundary between life and the otherworld is thin - liminal - and can be more easily crossed. Our Celtic ancestors celebrated this time as Samhain. In Mexico they celebrate Día de los Muertos and welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives for a brief reunion and party that often takes place in the cemetery. Death and life - ending and beginnings - all brought together. Change - we mark the changes of season and time - whether or not we want to!
There are so many things over which I have no control - I cannot will the leaves to stay green and the nights to stay short. The seasons change even if I refuse to flip the page on the calendar. Soon it will be winter - a pandemic winter. Sigh.
Wildfire I: It began October 14th but I didn't know about right away. Was it denial that kept me from taking in the news that HOME was burning? I have lived in five different states and two different countries, making homes in every place I've lived. Each place has felt more or less like home after a time, but only one place was etched in my soul even before I arrived there. I recall that November day in 1987 when my preschooler and I got off the plane in Denver - it felt wonderfully familiar, like visiting an old friend. In between interviews we headed west on Route 40 until we got to the exit for Empire and Rocky Mt National Park. The trip over Berthoud Pass and through Middle Park was incredible - like a homecoming. We got to Grand Lake and I was in tears - awed by what I saw and how it felt to be there. We ventured into the Park and deep into the Kawuneeche Valley - stopping only when we reached the gate closing the road. We got out of the car and David played in the snow. From that moment on I was in love with the western side of RMNP - a place we would hike every chance we got once we moved to Denver seven months later. Due to serendipity, I bought a one room cabin on Woodpecker Hill that gave us spectacular views of Grand Lake, Baldy and the Continental Divide (for less than a nice SUV costs today, as Grand Lake was not yet a prime destination). The cabin was very simple (no running water in the winter and a fireplace for heat) but I felt such a sense of peace when there. Weekends and holidays there were a joy (even if in the winter we had to hike up the hill because my VW Golf could not get up the dirt road for all the snow). I felt known and at peace in that place- like I had always lived there. It was HOME.
When David was six I almost moved us up to the cabin to make a life in the place I loved. Instead, I continued on in ministry first (and briefly) in Arizona and then on to California, eventually selling the cabin. But I brought us back to Grand Lake once a year. I spent my 30th and 50th birthdays there with my family, hiking my favorite trail (East Inlet). I've retreated there when my heart was broken to bits and needed the healing medicine I could only find there. David will scatter my ashes there when I die. Ashes to ashes...
...to ashes. The fire started north of Hot Sulphur Springs. High winds turned it into a monster that swallowed up forests of beetle killed lodgepole pines - trees weakened by the changing climate that then became vulnerable to this opportunistic pest. The fire then ate houses and outbuildings and even crossed into parts of Grand Lake. It spotted onto Woodpecker Hill. It rolled into the west side of RMNP and blackened trails that my son was raised hiking. The North Inlet (my second favorite trail) is fully in the fire zone - that is the first place I saw a moose nursery (which I named the moosery. You had to walk a long time to reach that spot, but if you timed it just right, it was amazing). The fire raced up and over the Continental Divide and began a steady march to Estes Park. Currently fire lines and a new blanket of snow are holding it to a slow creep. But the snow will not put out the fire in the stands of trees, and the weather is set to warm up again on Tuesday. So much has been destroyed. And it is perilously close to joining up with Colorado's largest wildfire - the Cameron Peak Fire. That fire started south of Red Feather Lakes - a place where there is a thriving Buddhist community, and a beautiful Stupa that so far has survived the fire (unlike the other buildings surrounding it). It, too, is a place of deep beauty that has been burned and scarred.
My heart aches at the loss - the habitat, the wildlife, the homes, the dreams and the people who have died. Such a loss!
Several times a day I check for updates - just to see if there is any news. I read the stories of those who know that their homes are gone and those who lost loved ones in the fire. I celebrate the way the community is coming together to help each other - even with the fire still active and sitting on the doorstep. My favorite trail - the trail that I walk in my head when I'm stressed or anxious - is just on the edge of the fire. The little pine that I water with my thermos when I stop to rest just past Adams Falls may still be alive. The first meadow where I stop to have breakfast and watch the sun rise above Baldy may not yet be scorched. Or the rock I sit on when eating breakfast may look out at a blackened landscape. The little cabin on Woodpecker Hill may be gone. Ashes to ashes.
Snow fell there last night - a blanket of snow to soothe the fire - a hug from mother nature to help to calm things down. Those on the fire lines will get some sleep tonight - it is too cold to be working the lines. Hopefully everything will pause and rest for a time.
Wildfire II: I feel a similar sense of horror as I watch the metrics for the pandemic. That fire has picked up steam and is rolling along, fueled by denial and hubris and selfishness and a lack of consistent leadership and an ignorance of interdependence that may yet kill this country. I shake my head in disbelief as politicians lie to serve their own needs - needlessly putting lives at risk. Pandemics are a lot like wildfires in that without mitigation measures to slow it down, it can reach a point where you can't stop it. Since mitigation measured have been politicized (and thus demonized by many), it is unlikely people will mask up, stay physically distant and outdoors - especially with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year on the horizon. The pandemic firelines are not holding, and there is nothing like a blanket of snow to quiet things down. I fear that we foolish humans may just burn everything to the ground! And the scale of loss is so unnecessary! It doesn't have to be like this!
I pull up the ARCGIS map and watch the fire creeping forward. I pull up the COVID data and watch cases, hospitalizations, ICU admits, positivity and deaths racing in the wrong direction. Wildfire season - and all the first responders are tired, be they on the firelines or in the hospitals. I fear this season will bring much destruction and death - downed trees fuel the wildfire, and people ignoring public health guidance fuel the pandemic. But it needn't be this way with the pandemic; we can build public health firelines. We can take steps now that would make a difference - we can slow the pandemic fire. But I worry that our citizens do not have the will to take steps to prevent this from becoming a catastrophe. Ashes to ashes.
After the Fires: From the ashes of the East Troublesome Fire, new trees will grow - but the landscape and its community are forever changed as they face this level of destruction. I will not live to see the healing of this land that I love, but perhaps my Grandson, in his elder years, will see the beauty of new life flourishing.
In time there will be vaccines that, if taken by sufficient numbers of people, will get us to herd immunity and eventually slow and control the virus. I wonder what kind of new life will emerge from the ruins of our pandemic experience? I wonder if I will see it in my lifetime, or if the destruction will be such that only later generations will see it?
Please do what you can do to slow the SARS CoV-2 wildfire. Wear your mask, wash your hands, socially distance, outside is better than inside, avoid crowds, stay home when you feel sick or have had an exposure to someone who has the virus, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then please accept what you cannot change and find a way to make peace with current circumstances - COVID fatigue or no COVID fatigue. We change what we can, and then we formulate strategies for accepting what cannot change right now, hard though that is. If you need help formulating strategies for coping during these next few months, please reach out.
Winter will eventually bring an end to the West's wildfire season, but unless we practice public health mitigation measures, winter will be an accelerant for this pandemic wildfire - and that would be catastrophic.
With love, lamentations, and deep, deep sorrow,
Kim
