The hem of my satin princess costume caught fire one Halloween night when I stood too close to a smiling jack-o’-lantern on the front porch. The flame ignited the fabric like a torch. I screamed and ran down the steps out onto the lawn, trying to outrun the yellow blaze – the exact wrong thing to do. But I was only seven years old and didn’t know better.
From out of nowhere a tall man appeared, scooped me up, pulled me to the ground, and stomped out fire. I lay there sobbing, my bare legs and white cotton panties exposed to the world. “Don’t ever run from fire,” the man said. “It only feeds the flame.” The incident left a searing reminder on the back of my right thigh of how quickly a renegade flame can bite in and devour its prey.
Sixty-two years later, on an August day in 2020, thunderstorms moved across Oregon starting multiple fires in the Santiam Canyon east of where I live. On September 7th, powerful winds blew across the Pacific Northwest, reaching speeds of over fifty miles an hour causing the fire to explode in size as they raced westward. On September 9th, the fires destroyed most of the towns of Gates, Mill City and Detroit. On September 10th, I stood at my living room window and looked out at a layer of fine gray ash that blanketed the leaves of the rhododendron and camellia bushes. Gray-brown air rated “hazardous” turned the daytime sky an apocalyptic red. The forty-foot trip from my front door to the garbage can left my eyes and throat burning. Not one bird appeared at the feeders.
Alone and panicked, I drove myself crazy checking the online fire map every ten minutes. I finally called my son, Bill, on the East Coast. “We have wildfires raging just east of us. We haven’t been told to evacuate yet, but I’m getting really nervous.”
Bill, ever level-headed and steady, reassured me there was plenty of asphalt and cement between me and the fire. “You’ll be okay, mom,” he said. “They aren’t going to let the capital of Oregon burn.” But his reassurance didn’t stop the feeling of impending doom and the incessant pounding of my heart against my ribs. I laid the phone on the kitchen counter, reached down and touched the old scar on the back of my right thigh, still palpable more than six decades later. Instruction not to run from the fire saved my life back then, but that advice didn’t hold up against a wildfire that had already ravaged thousands of acres of forest and hundreds of homes.
When I could no longer stand the grinding in my gut, I packed up essential papers and a bag of clothes, and fled south to my daughter’s house. Eugene had fires raging in the east, too, but at least if something horrible happened I would be with my family.
The fire burned for days, taking out one-third of the Santiam Forest and destroying most of my favorite hiking trails. When I heard news of the damage, I doubled over and wept. I wept for the plethora of plants and wildlife being destroyed – trees that couldn’t run away, insects sizzling into oblivion, and deer leaping over red-hot simmering terrain looking for a way out. I could run away from the fire, other earthlings couldn’t.
Many of my most treasured memories of living in the Willamette Valley revolved around the Santiam. Like the rainy day I counted 83 fire-bellied newts along the Shellburg Falls trail, or the time my hiking companion reminded me, just as I was turning to bolt, not to run from the black bear we met face-to-face at Duffy Lake. I cringed at the thought of charred and devastated old-growth forests that had once brought me so much peace and happiness. Would fire eventually ravage all our beloved wild places?
Anyone who is paying attention has heard it over and over – humans are causing the unraveling of life on earth as we know it. We have overused and under-loved our planetary home. The result is hotter days, rising sea levels, ocean warming, species extinction, and a rise in the number of devastating fires. If this becomes the norm, how do we learn to withstand and stand with fire? I can’t run away from the reality of what might lie ahead.
As far back as I can remember nature has always been my respite, my church, my holy communion. I wondered what the future would be like for my three grandchildren, my four great grandchildren, and all those who have yet to join us in this beautiful place. What legacy are we leaving for our beloved heirs?
The questions burned in my heart, like the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue in my childhood church, with the flame in the middle of his chest signifying the transformative power of divine love. I spent many long Catholic masses studying that statue and hoping Jesus could somehow fix my father’s alcoholism. In those days I took all my sadness to the creek in the ravine across the street and spent hours catching pea-sized pollywogs, watching them swim in the palm of my hand, then releasing them back into the murky water.
I thought back to those seemingly never-ending happy days of innocence and wonder in nature. As a kid, I went to nature for comfort, and before the fires I still did. I hoped I still would, still could. I hoped that the heartache of witnessing the devastation left by the burn wouldn’t keep me away.
A week later the fire was partially contained, and I returned home from my daughter’s house. But the online air quality meter stayed red, and I stayed trapped inside for days. Then one Saturday, after a welcome westerly wind cleared the air, the meter finally turned green, and I couldn’t get outside fast enough. I drove west away from the fires toward a trail I knew well. Time to get back out on the land for healing and respite.
The scalloped edges of green oak trees lined the hiking trail at Baskett Slough Wildlife Refuge. I stopped part way up the hill and gazed out at the dried honey-gold blossoms of Queen Anne’s Lace and the curved arboreal flow of trees under a mantle of cerulean blue. These were joys I had taken for granted – clear views and clean, fresh air to breathe.
I wove up through the oak savanna, and down onto flat meadowland. Two slim, long-tailed birds of prey glided over the marsh and rode warm air currents high into the air. At first, I thought they were red-tailed hawks, but the shape and color were off. I thought back to my knowledge of northwest birds of prey. The tails were narrow, and there was an unmistakable splash of white on their rumps signaling they were Northern Harriers. The two hawks swooped back and forth across the fields, dipping close to the ground, then soaring up again in an aerial ballet.
I identified one as a male (gray above and whitish below with black wingtips) and one as a female (brown above with a whitish underside). They flew close enough for me to get a good look at their flat, owl-like faces and sharply hooked bills. I watched them hunt the field back and forth, over and over, until they finally soared above the oak-lined hill and out of sight.
In the distant sky beyond where the hawks had disappeared lay a massive mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke, a conflagration of what I imagined to be the charred remains of cedar branches, huckleberries, snakeskin, and beetle juice. All of it tumbling up through the air in a burning inferno. Air – the same element that fed the raging wildfires, had also gratefully filled my lungs with oxygen as I hiked, and lifted the hawks’ wings to soar over prairies and ponds.
I spent hours in the sanctity of the quiet refuge that day. Later, refreshed, and grateful for the hawk sightings, I drove the twenty-five miles back home. I unloaded my daypack and hiking poles and headed toward my front door. As I approached the steps, a remarkably loud and distinct bird call rang out from somewhere behind my house – Keek-keek-keek. I walked to the side of the house. No birds. Then, a movement overhead caught my eye and I spied what I thought must be an illusion. Out from the tree behind my house, directly over my head, flew a beautiful doe-brown bird with a blaze of white gleaming at the base of her tail. A second hawk, a male, flew over and joined her. They both landed in a nearby cedar and disappeared into the dark green limbs.
Not only had I seen Northern Harriers for the first time that day, but I was seeing them again, flying right over my inner-city bungalow. Could they have been the same two birds? It seemed like a miracle – a gift too good to be true. Why had they come to my house? And why that day? Harriers are an endangered species and are rarely seen in cities. Refugees from the fires, their normal migration paths had probably been disturbed by the smoke, driving them west. The hawks were adapting, surviving, carrying on one moment to the next.
Early the next morning I woke up to another day of welcome fresh air, and I opened my front door first thing. The street was empty, and the neighborhood was quiet. I sat down by the open door in my usual morning nesting place where I drink coffee and contemplate my day.
Keek-keek-keek. Again? I launched out of my chair and made my way barefoot out onto the cold asphalt. The call resounded again from the tall cedar across the street. I craned my neck and scanned the limbs. My neighbor peered out the window, too, no doubt curious about why I was standing barefoot in my pajamas and terry-cloth robe in the middle of the street, my wild gray hair uncombed and unruly. I waved briefly then quickly set my eyes back on the cedar. “Good morning, beauty” I said. “Are you up there?”
She emerged from the limbs, dipped, and soared over me like a winged messenger from the spirit world. She flew low, close enough for me to catch a glimpse of her reptilian eyes and trace the dark, heart-shaped line of feathers around her face. Her clawed feet were an arsenal of yellow orange knives slicing the air less than fifteen feet above my head. I felt the breeze at dawn with secrets to tell me as she flapped her wings through the morning air – up and out of sight. My grief and fear were gone. Everything was gone except for the exquisite moment of communion with her.
The Northern Harrier reawakened something in me that day – hope. The poet, Wendell Berry, wrote: “To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” I can’t fix our broken earth, but I can do something – I can whole-heartedly cherish what remains.
Standing barefoot in the middle of the street that morning, I touched the back of my right thigh and made a vow: I will visit the scarred, burned-out places in the Santiam as I would for any dear friend who was recovering from a devastating injury. I will stay true to my childhood love for nature and find a different kind of beauty in the devastation – something wonderful rising up from the ashes. I will go out and look for the beauty in the brokenness.
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