My mother hadn’t forgotten. So when I showed up with my animals in the middle of the night, having driven ten hours to get away from the fire, she didn’t question it. She said, “fire has always been your biggest fear.”
And it’s not just that one thing which makes a fire burn in such a catastrophic way, just how it wasn’t just that one thing which sent me running. It’s an accumulation of circumstances, and at that moment, I, too, was that dry terrain with high winds and low humidity through land which hadn’t burned in centuries, just waiting for one asshole to burn it all to hell. In my case, I am always that asshole.
But all things eventually shift and come to an end, even historic fires which can’t be controlled. And the ashes will make for fertilizer and everything will one day come back. So after 7 days and 6 nights, I drove back home towards the fire which still seems unending. I drove through an evacuated Lassen National Park with smoke filling my lungs even with all the windows closed, the sun, a blinding red dot in the sky amidst the pines still standing. While I was gone, the seeds from my bird feeder grew two big sunflowers as if to say, ‘we’ve been waiting for you.’
I got home, unpacked and was back to fine. The dogs were back to chasing quail and the cat to chasing frogs.
My Love is for the Birds - Sketches 