Fire

I drove down I84 to Boise yesterday and got a sideways look at the fires that have been worrying everyone in Baker county over the past few days and weeks.  The first 40 miles of the trip snake down a long winding canyon of sagebrush and rock outcrops, light open forest and pastures.  Normally this time of year it all looks ‘cured’ with most of the green gone to yellow and brown and I would call it ‘burnt’ to myself.  But now burnt takes on a very different meaning as huge parts of the west side of the canon are not yellow and brown, but black and grey, dust and ashes.   Home mostly to rodents, deer, coyotes and countless smaller critters, it’s now pretty much unmade and lifeless.  I couldn’t get any pictures as I was driving but I was gawking at the extent of the burn nonetheless.  Toasted.

The fires have been pretty intense lately.  The first thing I always notice is the quality of the light throughout the day.  Normally crisp and clear, fires announce themselves with a dingy yellow light.  The sky is a little less blue, the sun a bit more pale and I start noticing how less visible landmarks are across the valley.  If the Wallowa mountains disappear that’s one thing, if the windmill towers at Cove fade that’s another, if I can’t see Elk Ridge directly behind the house that’s serious smoke.  This past week the smoky smell was noticeable and ash was falling out of the sky onto the deck, into open windows, onto the surface of the pet’s water dish.  Ash from sage, juniper and pine from 30 miles south.  From what was once green but not is black.

But only for a little while.  The rains will come in the fall and the dust will settle and the snow will start the work of preparing everything for spring.  Grass will grow and the sage will spring up again and the deer will wander back through and the coyotes will follow the rabbits and mice and in a hundred years it may all happen again.

It’s all pretty normal and while it’s a little thrilling to see all the smoke and watch the choppers overhead trailing water buckets underneath, it’s just a blip, an ecological action and reaction.  It’s all working the way it’s been working for millennia.  Tens of thousands of years and millions and millions of creature lifetimes.  It’s nice to wonder at our small part of the puzzle and not be too attached to any one part of it.  Our friends have been spared and if not we’ll help out. 

Smoke Blowing Into Town