The first thing that hits you is the silence. There is no buzzing, no nattering or background chirping. The trees might as well be posts in the ground. Even four years later, they are locked in a silent scream. The experience is inorganic. It could be the moon. It is the silent numbness that comes before the mourning. It is apocalyptic, like the eerie silence after a nuclear bomb, of twisted metal and melted glass.
It is hard to describe the difference between this kind of silence and the one that existed before it, the quiet growing. It is a sound that is felt more than heard. How does one measure the decibels of a thousand inaudible conversations between trees, or the quiet construction sounds of light being framed diligently into lumber? How might you record the sound of a butterfly's wings as it zips from flower to flower in the dappled light of a meadow? Or calculate the silent tension of animals hiding in the thick undergrowth, watching and waiting? All I can say is you notice it when it's gone.
I wander off the path for a while and note that, even now, it is like walking through an ashtray. My son takes considerable joy out of kicking the soot up, and it follows behind us like a mist. The delicious smells of decay and growing, of sharp pine and humus, are replaced with stale memories. All oxygen that flows into our lungs is imported. The air is without satisfaction. The welcome shade of the trees is gone, and we are exposed to the scorching sky.
I think to myself, How impatient, how unyieldingly cruel is a forest fire! I see how it leapt from tree to tree, sparing none, no time to fully consume any of them. It leaves them all behind, humiliated and with their skin still burnt and hanging. It has no regard for centuries of painstaking labor. It is a stone through a stained glass window, an arsonist let loose at an art gallery, a pillager without mercy. It takes so little time, so little effort to undo all that has been done here. Entire ecosystems falter to its destructive power, and the wildlife dwindles. Fireweed rushes in like a uniform to cover the shame of the naked earth that was once teeming with so much diversity. A forest in a fire crumples like a Rembrandt or a van Gogh.
But a forest is not really a piece of art anyway. It is a drama. Every child knows that both failure and redemption is written into the storyline. You can't have a good story without the struggle and the setback. Every villain has their day, every forbidden fruit is eventually eaten, and every child of God will yield to the animal inside them. But with fires so in life, there is always a resolution, however long or painful it might be.
Time is grace, and seeds that lay dormant for years awake to weave new tapestries out of ancient patterns. Saplings rise all around me directly beside the bones of their ancestors, and old things are made new. Nutrients that were locked away in the forest canopy are returning again to the matrix of the soil to give life back to the young. Earth proves her power once more because in a forest there can be no real Armageddon. Only rebirth.
You can always find hope in a forest.
Nevertheless, it has taken me four years to write down the nagging question I have held onto ever since I beheld the aftermath: What if this is all more than metaphor? The Kenow fire in Waterton was caused by chance lightning that fell from the sky, but I still remember how dry it was that year, and how long the clouds held onto the rain. What if the fire wasn't meant to be? What if it was our fault? This year is already so dry. Record breakingly so. Is there a lightning bolt from heaven in store for us? Do fires, floods, earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, seas heaving themselves beyond their bounds always come as part of a natural cycle? Are we following a natural course? When will my forest fire come?
The whole world feels like kindling now, and all around me I see sparks. We know the world is getting warmer, but even more than this I fear indifference, hubris, greed, and our insane divisions that are more persistent than ever as we retreat more and more to our fortresses. The world is drying up. Our abuses toward the earth, toward each other, could be reaching a point of no return. What happens when we no longer see the forest for the trees, when our collective spirit fades? Will rebellion always be given a second chance? Is it already too late to stop the blazes?
I know I am prone to melodrama, and not everything is as it seems. A fire is, after all, just a fire. Life heals itself. I return home sunburned and filled, hug and kiss my kids who race to meet me at the door, and run for my son a bath. Everything looks like it will be alright. But even here, safe in our fire-insured home, I can picture a lightning storm in a dry space, see it strike in my own dry heart, and I wonder if I am really trained to put out this kind of fire.
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