This entry was posted on 7/17/2011 1:35 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
It's been well over two months since I posted a blog and I have struggled with what to say. Certainly there has been political news galore, but the distractions from closer to home have prevented me from sounding off as readily as I might once have done. It seems the euphoria over the fact that our home was miraculously spared by the West Texas wildfires of April has given way to the depressing reality of living in the midst of a burnt-out fire zone in a rural area where once you beheld natural beauty and wild animals out your doors and windows and now...only a blackened graveyard of dead trees and skinned earth.
The fires which swept across Texas and which still burn in some places, have so far destroyed almost 3 million acres. Even worse are the extreme drought conditions that have caused every county in the state to be declared a natural disaster area. Freeway signs into and out of cities warn of extreme wildfire conditions which remain in effect--most of them called off July 4th fireworks displays. And a heat that can only be described as hellish has gripped the area where I live like Satan's vice--We are now in the eighth straight week of daily temperatures over 102 degrees--soaring at times up to 110.
High winds as hot as a blowtorch sweep across land once lush with grass and thick with brush, but now covered only with a fine layer of soot, ash, and sand. Several times a week, I must clean the soot off of every surface in the house--even lampshades and furniture. You can't keep the stuff out of a leaky 107-year old house.
For more than a month following the fires, we could still smell smoke and a smoky haze layered the horizon. Looking out over scorched, ruined pastures, cleaning soot, smelling smoke--it was impossible to ESCAPE the trauma of what had happened. Sometimes my husband would have nightmares that he was fighting the fires again. Even our dog, Maggie, was depressed. For two months, you could not entice her to play. She would lie down, put her nose on her front paws, and look at you with bereft brown eyes, and there was little you could do to comfort her.
Even sadder was the reality of what grass fires do to the animals who make their homes in the wild. Living as we have for the past 30 years in and amongst wildlife of all kinds, we were sensitive to the changes almost immediately. Like, how we no longer heard the coyotes. How birdsong virtually stopped, only to start again at a distance from the house where I could no longer see them. How, instead of seeing a flock of 20 wild turkeys, we were lucky to see one or two. How, rather than a busy covey of quail scurrying across the pasture, we might spot three or four. How we seldom see deer anymore. How one wild hog somehow lost his family, and comes foraging alone all the way into the barn--unheard of before the fires. But there is just nothing for them to eat out there.
Heartbreaking, too, was the sadness in my son's eyes when he came for a visit. Standing with him in the burnt-out empty space behind the house where the horse barn once stood, buffeted by hot winds and blazing sun, soot whipped up into dust devils, he mused to me, "This reminds me of Iraq."
It is devastating to me to think that the one place my son has always been able to come to as a refuge and sanctuary now resembles a war zone.
My husband kept reassuring me that it WOULD rain again, and that the plants would regrow and the wild animals would return. But as the months passed, I soon found myself unable to be comforted by that. When the thermometer in your kitchen window reads 108 degrees at 10:30 in the morning, it's hard to believe in rain.
Even with all of that, one particular rite I had assiduously avoided was hiking down to the Chinaberry grove to see the damage. On this small ranch of a hundred acres, the Chinaberry grove is like our own personal miniature forest, a completely private sanctuary where, through the years, we have hiked, ridden horseback, camped, led family devotionals, taken friends, picnicked--the kids ran and played out there like little wild creatures, swinging from ropes in the tall trees and building leaf forts in the fall.
It had been my daughter's plan to marry there one day, in the autumn, when it is at its most beautiful. We'd planned to take guests to the site in horse-drawn carriages for the ceremony. She had even taken a boyfriend or two down there to show him the place and "test" his reaction. If he didn't like the Chinaberry grove or thought the idea of anybody getting married down there was stupid, he was on his way out!
When our son knew that he had found something special in one young lady that could develop into a lifetime together, he brought her out here and took her hiking. It was important to him that she knew what this place meant to him, and that she might love it too. She did, and he married her.
For me, it was a soul-home. Sooo many times over the years I had traipsed down to the Chinaberry grove with a notebook and pen, or a pocket camera, or book, or a backpack with all three--and sat on my favorite broad "restin' rock" to look up through the leaves and think, pray, write, WORK THROUGH whatever challenge faced me. I tromped down there through deep snow and waded through in heavy rains and sprawled out on the ground on lazy summer days, cooled by the shade and kept company by the cacophony of bird chatter. I even did Yoga down there from time to time.
Once, after the kids were grown and gone, Kent and I had made love in the Chinaberry grove.
My son has always loved Henry David Thoreau, and Walden is one of his favorite books. When he was deployed to Iraq with the Marines, I had kept a journal for him that I called, "Camp Springs Walden," cataloging for him the many mysteries of nature that were on abundant display right there in the Chinaberry grove. Every couple of weeks, I'd mail him an installment.
If ever there was a place in the life of our family that could be called "sacred," that would be it.
In the days following the fires, Kent and our son, Dustin, had made the trek to the Chinaberry grove, and Kent had taken photographs that, when I saw them on the computer, made me physically ill. The fires that had devoured our land had been unusually hot and particularly voracious--even seasoned firefighters said they'd never seen anything quite like it--as Kent had said, the fire would move through, then would come back and get whatever it had missed the first time. And the worst, hottest part of the fires had completely engulfed the Chinaberry grove.
As the weeks passed and my gloom worsened, Kent suggested I visit the Chinaberry grove and, as he put it, "have a good cry and move on."
I doubted it would work in quite that way but I just didn't know if I could bear it. I hadn't even been able to watch the destruction of the big tree in the movie, Avatar! It's true! How could I bear this?
My family had been urging me to start on a book of memoirs about a big-city girl marrying a cowboy and raising two children in the boonies, and I had even written the first chapter, but after the wildfires, I did not know what to say anymore. Was it all gone? Was it all lost? How was I to write about THAT?
One day, sorting through papers on my desk, I came across a copy of the Camp Springs Walden that I had kept for myself. I picked it up and began to read. In order for you to fully comprehend the meaning of this place--of this land--to me and to my family, you must read at least this small excerpt from a letter I had sent to my son while he was engaged in a terrible war thousands of miles away, written in October, 2004:
One of the reasons I'd really been wanting to go all this month is that this is the time of the migration of the Monarch butterflies, who pass straight through here on their way to Mexico. One time several years ago, I was walking back from the Chinaberry grove, and came upon what looked, at first, like a large bush covered with fluffy yellow blossoms--but when I drew near, I could see it was butterflies. Oh, it just took my breath away.
Other years, I've sat on the restin' rock, and watched ten or twelve of them flit around me.
But a few years ago, there was a terrible out-of-season storm in Mexico that caught the Monarchs and caused the deaths of literally billions of them. Since then, I haven't seen nearly that number out here. All the same, I knew it was late in the season to get to see any, and I was right.
At first, I was a little disoriented and wasn't sure if we were close to our Chinaberry grove, but our old dog Bart suddenly took a sharp left turn and headed straight that way, to the fence and under it. Sometimes he can be just plain spooky.
So I clambored up and made my way to the restin' rock, and the first thing I saw was this incredible butterfly--not a Monarch--but the amazing thing about it was that its wings looked exactly like the leaves of a Chinaberry tree when changing color. Right down to delicate veins that looked like veins of a leaf. I watched it alight on a scaffolding of leaves, close its wings, and disappear. I took a step closer with the fantasy of getting a photograph, and it flew away.
What was especially neat about that is that falling leaves would catch on silver spider webs, and the wind would cause them to go into a twirling flutter that looked just like the movements of a butterfly. So you couldn't tell even when they were airborne, whether they were butterflies or leaves.
The moist ground smelled, well, earthy, for lack of a better word, and I tilted my face and gazed up at the sky, and it was the most spectacular shade of sapphire blue, and the sun backlit the leaves like piles of glittering gold coins spilled out over blue silk cloth--only, more beautiful,you see, because of the gold of the leaves still tinged with green.
Soft white puffs of cloud would drift across, and all you could hear was the hushed breeze through the leaves. I thought about the bittersweet perfection of nature. Of course, nature is not perfect. It's gloriously messy. But what I mean is that, on this perfect day, I had a son who was thousands of miles away at war.
That kind of bittersweet.
I was thinking about you then, at the very moment that you were e-mailing me, telling me that the day was a bit cooler, and it felt so good that you and your buddy almost forgot where you were--until you could hear the sounds of explosions and mortar rounds. Which is very much what I was thinking at that moment.
I didn't know, of course, that you were sending the e-mail, but I did think about you over there, and I thought about how utterly, completely SAFE this place, the Chinaberry grove, is. Of course, you have to watch out for snakes and things, but you can sit there, entirely alone, and not hear traffic, or worry that someone may suddenly cross your path, the way they might, say in a public park.
Every now and then, a lilting breeze would glitter the golden leaves against the warm buttery glow of the sun, and it was a place of peace.
The only interruption I had, in fact, was the persistent caw, caw of a crow or blackbird. I couldn't see him and didn't know where he was, but I could hear him, loud and clear.
Ravens, of course, have all kinds of magic in Native American traditions. Some tribes fear the cry of ravens, thinking it brings death, but actually, raven mythology is much richer and more varied than that. In truth, ravens are extremely intelligent birds. They can be taught to speak, like parrots. And both in the wild and in laboratory experiments, ravens use tools to crack nuts or reach seeds or fruits or whatever it is they want. They are smart and wary and are not intimidated by other animals or birds.
In every Native tradition, ravens are considered to be creatures of great magic...According to a book I have at home, Animal Speak, the Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small, ravens can teach us "how to stir the magic of life without fear." The author, Ted Andrews, himself an Indian, is an expert in animal behavior and an authority on animal symbolism in cultures the world over. He goes on to say, "If raven has come into your life, expect magic. Somewhere in your life, magic is at play...linking your will and intention." He talks about how you should use the energy of raven to be creative, and bring forth from your own dark nights of the soul...light.
Well, I could certainly use a little light these days, some creative energy and spark. But that wasn't what I was thinking as I stretched out on the moist ground, Bart at my side, my head making a pillow of the restin' rock, gazing at the turquoise sky through glittering gold leaves.
What I was thinking was that, I couldn't imagine how the real Walden could have possibly been any more beautiful than this.
(I can't get the link to go through, so if you'd like to see the book by Mr. Andrews on animal symbolism, you can find it here:
Not all loss is the same, certainly. The loss of a child or spouse has to be the worst kind of loss. Loss of beloved parents. Loss of cherished friends. Loss of a home itself. Even the loss of your health and vitality is a blow, as is the loss of a job or a career one loves.
Over the years I had often worried about losing any one of those--in fact, I did bury loved ones and friends, had dealt with chronic illness, had lost a career I treasured--so I was no stranger to grief. Lord knows I was driven nearly wild with fear and anxiety for my son when he was fighting in a terrible war. I worried about my daughter, pursuing her dreams in huge metropolitan areas all the way across the country. I fretted because my husband traveled so much, driving tens of thousands of miles every year. And I was always afraid whenever tornadoes passed uncomfortably close to our home.
But in all that time, it never once crossed my mind that we could lose the LAND, that places we held dear, like the Chinaberry grove, might be destroyed. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't BRACED.
It took about an hour--maybe two--for trees and plant life that had been growing for decades or even centuries to be scrubbed off the earth by the flames of the fire, for barns, fences, and pens to be vaporized in the intense heat, for wildlife to be rendered either homeless or killed. I watched it happen, standing numb and in shock.
Over the following weeks, I'd dealt with the aftermath.
But I hadn't gone to the Chinaberry grove.
Every day, I ventured a bit further out into the pastures, scattering seed for the birds even though I could only rarely enjoy watching them out the window as I had once done routinely. I searched for trees that still had some leaves, trees that had somehow been spared the worst of the flames, and I would scatter seed on the ground beneath those trees. If there was any place fairly sheltered--not many, anymore--I'd scatter seed there for the quail.
No longer did I have to wear jeans and boots to protect myself from brush and cactus. Now I just wore a plain pair of slip-on canvas shoes with rubber soles and shorts. There was no longer anything to scratch my legs. As for boots, which we usually wore as protection from rattlesnakes, the truth was that we had seen not a one in the months since the fires.
One morning, for some reason, I just kept walking. It was as if some gigantic magnet was pulling me.
Walking across the pastures was like walking across the moon. Grasses, brush, cactus, bushes, and other growth had been skinned off, leaving the earth exposed and bare. So much of the soot and ash had blown away by now, revealing soil that was leathery, cracked, and dry dry dry. Sometimes it was just sand, fine as on a beach. I could walk easily in my slip-on shoes. There were no animal tracks, I noticed.
The Mesquites still stood, their trunks and limbs black and skeletal, what leaves remained were brown and shriveled. Some of them had been broken right in half by the sheer heat of the fires. On one black dead limb far out in a pasture, I found a section of our horse barn roof, wrapped around it like a hot dog bun around a weiner, where it had been powerfully blown by the high scorching winds engendered by the fire.
Even the wind sounded different. Where once it would sough through the trees in a sigh you could hear coming for a mile or two, making a gentle shshshshsh sound--now it whistled like the sound of the wind you hear in an old movie Western--whheeeeewwww--kicking up dust devils that whipped across the pasture.
A desert, now.
I knew I was approaching the Chinaberry grove but still I kept walking, that same numbness heavy in my chest.
Like the Mesquites, the trees still stood, but their barks had been split off completely, as if they had been skinned, leaving the smooth bare skin of the inner tree bare and exposed, its leaves burnt off. I ran my hand over the surface of one tree, searching for any sign of life. There were no tree ants. No spiders. I leaned against the trunk, putting my cheek against the smooth naked skin of the tree, and I embraced it, whispering, "I am so sorry. So sorry this happened to you."
Underfoot was only black. Black soot, black ash, dead black leaves. No delicate webs connected the graveyard of trees, no insects or butterflies. "What will the Monarchs do this year?" I wondered. "Where will they go for rest, shelter, and food?"
I also noticed that there were no birds. The silence was so complete and so PROFOUND that I could literally feel it pressing against my eardrums. The sound of death.
I found the restin' rock and sat down in my old familiar haunt. It was blazing hot from the sun, because there was no longer any shade to shelter it.
But sprouting out from the base of every single dead tree was a brave new Chinaberry sapling--a jarring shock of dazzling green against the gloomy black. In spite of the fact that we had had virtually no rain since the fire, some of the saplings were already chest-high to me. I ran my hands along their tender leaves and murmured to them, "Be strong."
Leaving the Chinaberry grove, I trudged up the rise of land, marveling at all the exposed whorls, holes, and mounds of the earth itself--long hidden by brush and grass. In the uppermost southeast corner of the land, where I had hiked many times to gaze out over the valley--a surprise awaited me.
A stand of Cedar trees. For some unfathomable reason, the fire had missed that one small section. Everything around it, and across the fence in the neighbor's pastures, was burned. This was a particularly thick stand of Cedars, where deer had often sheltered. It was here that I found rabbit droppings and deer tracks, signs of life.
Signs of hope.
As I headed back home, I noticed that new Mesquites were also growing--again, at the bases of their dead parents--their green leaves in shocking contrast to the black all around. A good soaking rain could work miracles, no question.
My son, worrying about the state of my mind, had urged me to read a book by one of his old college psychology professors, David Rosen, M.D., called, Transforming Depression, Healing the Soul Through Creativity.
For some maddening reason, I can't get the link to work, so you can find the book here:
Dr. Rosen says that whenever we experience loss of any kind, or what he calls "Bad News," we experience a feeling of helplessness that leads to hopelessness. You feel profoundly shaken.
It feels, he says, as if "your soul has been lost."
This was a particularly poignant metaphor where the Chinaberry grove--and the rest of our place--was concerned because it had, for so many years, nourished my soul.
The "despairing soul" he says, "merely exists."
How true this is. After all, we still have to perform our daily routines--pets or children to care for, jobs to go to, bills to pay, laundry to get done--or for those who have lost their homes, packing up to do. We may sob the whole time we are doing these things, or walk around as if there is an anvil on our chests, but they must still be done.
You can go about the daily business of living while, at the same time, feeling dead inside.
"Loss of morale," says Dr. Rosen, "is generally associated with a collapse of a person's spirit, will, or courage."
He uses several analogies to describe depression--a dark tunnel, a dark cave--but the one feature these metaphors all seem to have in common is the word "dark." After a loss, we go to a dark place. Since Rosen is a Jungian psychiatrist, he goes into the Shadow Self, and I'm not going to go into that much detail. Suffice it to say that when hopelessness takes over, we see little light in our lives.
This is not all a bad thing, according to Dr. Rosen. After all, one can seek sanctuary in a cave, a place to rest, recover, and begin to rebuild.
But something else that takes place deep underground is that seeds from a dying plant, he points out, can germinate.
The wild land around us has proven that to me with the crazy shock of green sprouting at the base of each dead tree. Were we in a wetter climate, we would be seeing much regrowth in our pastures by now, but this is not going to be the case as long as this horrible drought lingers. However in spite of all odds against them, the trees seem determined to grow.
And so it is with the human spirit.
Hopelessness, Dr. Rosen points out, is the best predictor of suicide. (I've read that, so far, eight farmers who lived in the vicinity of the Fujikama nuclear reactor, which leaked radioactivity into flood waters that covered their farms following the tsunami--have committed suicide.)
Hope of any kind, however, should be the light that we focus on when we find ourselves in that dark tunnel or dark cave or dark underground--whatever we swamp around in during a depression following loss.
"That light," he says, "is hope, faith, and love." He calls them "the three antibodies."
"A person's depression," he says, "cannot be resolved until that person finds and reconnects with his or her lost soul, so that the candle of hope can be relit."
It can be, at times, very very hard to find that hope, to reconnect with our "lost soul." For me, cleaning soot off my lamps while the hot wind thunders against the house in 105 degree heat--it's hard to light any of those little soul-candles Dr. Rosen is talking about.
There are simple ways to find help, though, that you don't need therapy or medication for--such as seeking laughter, bonding with friends or family, or even crying.
Or reading books like this one.
Dr. Rosen also encourages us to seek a "transformation of the self" through creativity--artwork, photography, music, dance, writing (hence, this blog)--whatever form of creativity that appeals to us--which can help us to express not just our loss, but what meaning we hope to find in it.
Because if we can find some sort of purpose or meaning in our soul-challenges and our loss, if we can find some way to make it all make sense, then we are on our way to finding hope again, to lighting that little candle in our souls.
For all of us, I think, there comes a time in life when we go through something so searing, so devastating, that it is as if our souls have been scorched. Like the fire-ravaged pastures--we are skinned, raw. Like the charred trees--our masks have been stripped away and we feel exposed to the world.
Sometimes we've been consumed by the fires of grief, or even rage. Some may feel that rage following a company lay-off, or a divorce. (For me, I felt it when my son was sent to fight in a war I thought should never have been waged in the first place, and was being so badly managed that I knew he could die there. I raged with a ferocity that worried some in my family, and did not feel a sense of serenit until President Obama began bringing troops home from Iraq and my son completed his four-year term of service.)
Sometimes these spiritual wildfires consume our very Selves, and we emerge from them not even knowing who we are, anymore.
Because the land has been a part of me for so long--and I, a part of the land--I will take my lessons in survival from her. I watch as the animals come in from the wild to drink at the sources we have provided for them, and I see the birds come close to get the seed I've put out. I watch the newly sprouted trees struggle to thrive in the worst of circumstances, and rejoice at any new signs of life--the song of the coyotes that returned one evening after a two-month absence, the colorful new birds at our feeder, the bees swarming at the water-pan, Maggie chasing her ball with joyful abandon, a coachwhip snakeskin that had been shed, showing at least one ground-creature made it through the holocaust.
I watch for these signs. I write. And I wait for rain. As my husband says, it always rains again.
