Wildflowers from Wildfire
The log home in which I write this column nearly burned down in September, when a wildfire torched the surrounding woods and meadows. Such is the volatile nature of life in the Oregon forests these days. Wildfire danger is more evident than ever, making the precious nature of our fragile life more evident as well. Just to be here, still standing, is cause for celebration. It’s a reminder to cherish every moment.
Our wildfire was also a humbling reminder of divergent truths. First, of how our best efforts can backfire. Second, of how initial disaster can grow into a positive.
On that hot September day, the local electric utility company had hired a brush clearing crew to clear out undergrowth along the power lines, for the very purpose of fire prevention. Yet, their best efforts sparked exactly what they aimed to prevent. The flames soon raged out of control, heading straight uphill towards the houses of those of us directly adjacent. Only the nearby presence of helicopters, an air tanker, and ground wildfire crews—already fighting other fires—allowed quick enough action to contain the fire before it became a conflagration. One wildfire fighter told me later that with five minutes more, the fire would’ve raged over the nearby ridges, with vastly more disastrous outcomes.
I wasn’t home when the fire was sparked. By the time I arrived an hour later, the fire was already too fierce for me to retrieve anything from home. All of my writing and photography archives were threatened, my late mother’s paintings, the log home itself my mother built with her own hands, on and on. With all of our creative history and possessions, it would be all or nothing. Either a total loss, or the fire stopped with no personal damage.
I stood and watched from across the lake, along with many evacuated neighbors. We tracked the raging smoke, watching through binoculars to see if our houses were burning. We marveled at the skill of the helicopter pilots scooping water out of the lake for targeted pinpoint drops. Cheered the arrival of the air tanker, its pilot equally skilled at dropping retardant on the fire’s front lines. Felt gratitude for the fifty firefighters willing to risk their lives to contain the flames. Felt compassion for the chagrined crew who accidentally started it.
In the end, the fire fight was a true success, compared to many others here in recent years. Only twenty-four acres of land burned; nearly nothing compared to, say, the 173,000 acre fire up the McKenzie River nearby. This could’ve easily become that. And though the flames came within 300 feet of our neighborhood’s houses, none of us lost our homes.
Now it is spring, and in the burned meadows and forest, we are both watching and assisting the fire recovery. Fire is a natural part of the landscape, we’re humbly reminded, as we prepare for another arriving fire season. That brings us annual anxiety, but the results of this fire also bring us renewed celebration of nature’s resilience. It reminds us of our own.
By the grace within chance, the burned acres are all on protected land, within 1,000 acres we’ve sheltered via conservation easements. The scorched meadows and forests are in territory where fire’s absence has been as much of an issue as its presence. Undergrowth had overgrown, invasive plants had indeed invaded. A healthy fire was overdue to clear out some of what a century of well-intended fire suppression efforts had allowed to gain a chokehold. In our long-term conservation and restoration planning, we’d previously considered a prescribed burn in that very area, to return the land to balance via fire. This wildfire mostly mimicked that, to our grateful amazement.
This spring’s wildflowers in the burned meadow are more profuse than we’ve ever seen. They’re no longer in competition with the invasive blackberries and other intruders. The meadow is more open than it’s been in decades. It will be even more so, after we remove the burned firs, which were also invaders within the meadows and oak woodlands. The oaks, more suited for the natural habitat, survived the fire at a much higher rate. In the end, we see that we’ve been served more than harmed by that which felt like disaster. We celebrate that with gratitude and wonder.
The wildflowers offer a metaphorical remembrance as well, since a parallel process often plays out in our personal lives. What at first seems like disaster—even that which truly is—can often lead to a healthier, happier regrowth, which would’ve been impossible otherwise. Having cancer in my thirties proved that way for me. So did the loss of other relationship and career paths, which caused needed growth, reflection, and redirection. Much has been written by others, regarding this close intertwining of grief and gratitude. Of growth that grows from ash.
I celebrate that kinship between grief and gratitude, fire and flowers. I celebrate the many who are able transform trouble to thriving, as humbly as our burned land. As I watch and learn from one of the best wildflower blooms our meadow has ever seen, I celebrate the simple miracle that we’re still standing here to grow together, for yet another year. It will surely be a year as wild as fire and flowers.