Catching up, this was from the first week of January:
If any of you want to
read about smart phones, stop reading now... I meant the real ones. When I was a kid, there was a forest fire
that ran through Custer State Park (it’s in South Dakota, just southeast of
Custer, the town. It’s not Yellowstone, which extends into parts of Idaho and
Montana, from the northwest corner of Wyoming.
The WY/SD border is about twenty miles west of Custer at the northeast
corner of WY). Anyway, it kept burning
for a significant chunk of the summer. At one point, we were visiting a
cabin in the black hills of SD, about ten miles from the park, and the ash
content in the air was so thick that you could look directly at the sun.
At noon. I remember the radio having bad reception, and being told that
if the winds shifted and the fire began moving downhill, it could spread faster
than a man could run.
As we drove home, I
remember watching the cloud of smoke rising out the back window for many
miles. When we turned toward Wyoming at
Custer (the town), what we saw behind us was a wall of flames as we drove out
of town. The smoke was visible all the
way to Wyoming. Overwhelmed as we headed back to the
safety of Ohio, I found myself asking my dad why there had to be forest fires.
After all, trees were being destroyed, animals were dying, and people
were in danger. His answer was that it was a cycle and that sometimes
things needed to be destroyed on a large scale to allow something else to begin
again. Case in point: blackberries grow along the edge of forests and on
the forest floor, but only when there is not so much dense cover of trees that
the light of the sun can get to the young plants. Some of the first
things to begin growing in the forest again after a fire are blackberries.
Another example would be the jack pine. The pinecones from this
tree are so tightly closed that only the intense heat of a fire will allow them
to open up and release the seeds. Mother Nature provides a way that life
can come back almost immediately after a tragedy.
Over the last several
days, my life has kind of been a forest fire. I came home from vacation
to a blizzard, a very expensive car repair and an apartment which had water
seeping up through the floor. It took time to sort out, and I've been
without my home, my job or my little buddy, Bandit. But there are birds
in my life, and they bring the seeds for the blackberries...
I got to spend a
little more time with Becca until it was safe to drive her home. My
mechanic was willing to set up a payment plan. A very generous family of
friends reached out to not only help me rescue my precious guitar from the
moisture, but to pay for Bandit to be housed for extra days so I could wait
until it was safe to bring him home. Two other gracious families that I
know opened their homes to me so that I had a place to stay, a place for Roo
until she got taken home, a computer to use and a sense of security.
I cried. I got
very angry on the phone with some people. I was forced to deal with things
that no one should have to face without heavy sedation. And through it
all, many people helped the blackberries to grow.
-Chris and Sean found movies for Becca to watch on their laptops
in the hotel while I made the necessary phone calls to find a place for us to
stay.
-Tom and Barb drove out in their truck to ferry me and my precious
cargo safely to the O'Brien home where we were fed and hugged a lot.
-I helped Amy on a snow day begin plowing through "All Quiet on
the Western Front", not a bad book once you get into it, and for a
frustrated English teacher, it was fun.
-Jason took me back to the apartment as moral support (which I needed),
to a little diner, then bowling, had me laughing so hard I couldn't stop... and
with every hug I could breathe a little more deeply again.
-Mike, our head maintenance guy, went over everything I'd found with me
and was very patient and understanding, not to mention giving me valuable
information for my insurance claim.
-I got to know Nancy better, and two youth leaders got to talk in depth
about the young ones we mentor.
-Tony, my manager who was snowed in an extra day in Seattle, tried to
get things back on track for me in my absence so I won't miss too much in the
way of income opportunities.
-Georgia let me take over her computer to try to catch up on work,
setting aside her projects for mine.
By Monday, when this
is hopefully over and I get to begin reorganizing my life and stuff, more
blackberries will have grown. It's not much to eat, but when you are fire
ravaged and starving, it is a welcome gift. I cannot maintain my sanity
by focusing on the disasters. I can only straighten out my things a
little at a time and unwind the tight coil of fear and despair that traps my
heart when things like this happen. Today, I cut all my nails to the
length of the thumbnail which snapped off Saturday night while I was
desperately gathering clothes to take over to the hotel. Now, it's no
longer a reminder of that panicked feeling coating my throat from the bottom
up, threatening to suffocate me. It's just a template by which I pruned
back several branches, so that the tree can grow again. Every shower I
take, every night's sleep I can get, every friendly pet who wants to make me
feel better all bring me a moment closer to curling up in my own bed with my
little fuzzy friend and quietly reciting the Bene Gesserit "Litany Against
Fear" from Frank Herbert's Dune:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that
brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over
me and through me.
And when it has gone, I will
turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where it has gone, there will
be nothing...
Only I will remain.
If I cry then, it will be from relief. And then Bandit will lie
on top of me, and we will sleep.
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