Scars, Tiny Worlds, and Shadows
5/6/2023
Earth Day, 2023
We drove up to the burn scar from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire that started a year ago this month. It was the largest wildfire in the recorded history of New Mexico, started by prescribed burns conducted by the U.S. Forest Service. The Rio Gallinas, which runs through the burn scar and down into the town of Las Vegas, providing much of the drinking water for the area, was recently named one of the top 10 most endangered rivers of the U.S. by American Rivers, an environmental group aimed at river health and restoration. Many structures were destroyed in the fire, and the impact to the local ecosystem is devastating. The fire was just the beginning, followed by flooding. As we drove along the river up into the mountains towards Hermit’s Peak, many of the dwellings that were still standing had walls of sandbags or other barriers set up, but they were facing the road – on the opposite side of the homes from the river. The flooding would come from the surrounding hillside, with nothing to hold on to the rainwater when the monsoons came, the water would flood down the valleys, bringing toxic debris with it.
2022 was the worst wildfire season in New Mexico history. The Midnight Fire, which burned just north of El Rito in June of 2022, followed the same cycle as the other mountainous wildfire systems go. Ignited by lightning, it burned through areas heavy with dried, combustible ponderosa pine. Then, the flooding. Monsoon rains fell and with nothing to soak them up, they swept through the canyons, carrying boulders and burnt tree trunks and swept clear the path down to the river, strewing an avalanche of rocks over the meadow, and wiping out entirely the grove of cottonwoods that once shaded the pool beneath the waterfall.
Fire changes the landscape, in many ways. The connection between burn scars and flooding, excess of fire and water, is easily overlooked. The devastation to the local ecological networks is staggering, and sometimes restoration is unachievable. Certainly none of us in our lifetimes will see an ecosystem replenished like that of the pre-fire lands.
Still, there is some beauty still to be found. Driving through the tiny villages in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, there were many instances of blackened trees all around, and yet the structure within this ring of black trees was seemingly undamaged. Whether by chance, luck, good defense, or the hand of God, many homes were still standing, or perhaps had been rebuilt if the means were available. A mountain blue bird, so blue it looked artificial, too beautiful, flitted about in the pine trees, and lambs frolicked with their mothers in the new green grass. I’m sure many new pine trees have been born from the flames, and soon fresh green will overtake the blackened trunks that line the hillsides. Still, that scar will lie on the land, never quite forgotten.
My father-in-law, a father to many, and like a father to more, passed away in April this year, and was cremated the day before my Earth Day excursion into the burned lands. It felt like an apt celebration, from birth day to burn day, going to visit the burn scar. It is strange, the feeling of absence of someone that you expect to see again. You try to fill that void with things like flowers and mountain blue birds, seeing your loved one in all the beautiful things. A sign. It all becomes a sign of something larger, something infinitely more complex and too beautiful to fully comprehend. With grief comes the opportunity to have the contrast of joy, to experience it wholly.
My father-in-law grew up just across the mountains from Las Vegas, in Truchas, NM. The fire lapped at the edges of mountain property he left to my husband. With the loss of this man, who had wonderful stories, comes the loss of a Spanish dialect unique to Northern New Mexico. He is one of the last in the generations of New Mexicans that speak this special dialect, more similar to Spanish from 400 years ago, and mixed with modern English; “Spanglish,” as many of my high school classmates referred to it. Growing up attending school run by missionaries, speaking Spanish was not allowed. My mother-in-law, who also grew up in Truchas, said that when she first went to school she didn’t know English. Most of the class did not. When they had to go to the bathroom, they would get up and stand at the door and try to look pitiful, like a dog that had to go out, she said, and hope that the teacher would get the idea and excuse them. She still tries to teach me things in Spanish, and has a great number of dichos and jokes to share. Still, my children know next to none as far as Spanish goes.
Things vanish. Things change. There is no permanence, only the discomfort of expecting it and being disappointed. For now I am trying to fill the void of the vanished with things of beauty, watercolors on paper, and sad songs on the piano. With Spirit Dwellings that inhabit the corners of my garden (and frighten my kids), grown from the choppings and trimmings of last year’s growth, and random things I find laying about the yard. I know that that absence will still be uncomfortable, and I will notice it still, and it will hurt from time to time, but tiny things of hope will begin to take root in the crevices of the grief, and eventually the scar will be covered in flowers.
We drove up to the burn scar from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire that started a year ago this month. It was the largest wildfire in the recorded history of New Mexico, started by prescribed burns conducted by the U.S. Forest Service. The Rio Gallinas, which runs through the burn scar and down into the town of Las Vegas, providing much of the drinking water for the area, was recently named one of the top 10 most endangered rivers of the U.S. by American Rivers, an environmental group aimed at river health and restoration. Many structures were destroyed in the fire, and the impact to the local ecosystem is devastating. The fire was just the beginning, followed by flooding. As we drove along the river up into the mountains towards Hermit’s Peak, many of the dwellings that were still standing had walls of sandbags or other barriers set up, but they were facing the road – on the opposite side of the homes from the river. The flooding would come from the surrounding hillside, with nothing to hold on to the rainwater when the monsoons came, the water would flood down the valleys, bringing toxic debris with it.
2022 was the worst wildfire season in New Mexico history. The Midnight Fire, which burned just north of El Rito in June of 2022, followed the same cycle as the other mountainous wildfire systems go. Ignited by lightning, it burned through areas heavy with dried, combustible ponderosa pine. Then, the flooding. Monsoon rains fell and with nothing to soak them up, they swept through the canyons, carrying boulders and burnt tree trunks and swept clear the path down to the river, strewing an avalanche of rocks over the meadow, and wiping out entirely the grove of cottonwoods that once shaded the pool beneath the waterfall.
Fire changes the landscape, in many ways. The connection between burn scars and flooding, excess of fire and water, is easily overlooked. The devastation to the local ecological networks is staggering, and sometimes restoration is unachievable. Certainly none of us in our lifetimes will see an ecosystem replenished like that of the pre-fire lands.
Still, there is some beauty still to be found. Driving through the tiny villages in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, there were many instances of blackened trees all around, and yet the structure within this ring of black trees was seemingly undamaged. Whether by chance, luck, good defense, or the hand of God, many homes were still standing, or perhaps had been rebuilt if the means were available. A mountain blue bird, so blue it looked artificial, too beautiful, flitted about in the pine trees, and lambs frolicked with their mothers in the new green grass. I’m sure many new pine trees have been born from the flames, and soon fresh green will overtake the blackened trunks that line the hillsides. Still, that scar will lie on the land, never quite forgotten.
My father-in-law, a father to many, and like a father to more, passed away in April this year, and was cremated the day before my Earth Day excursion into the burned lands. It felt like an apt celebration, from birth day to burn day, going to visit the burn scar. It is strange, the feeling of absence of someone that you expect to see again. You try to fill that void with things like flowers and mountain blue birds, seeing your loved one in all the beautiful things. A sign. It all becomes a sign of something larger, something infinitely more complex and too beautiful to fully comprehend. With grief comes the opportunity to have the contrast of joy, to experience it wholly.
My father-in-law grew up just across the mountains from Las Vegas, in Truchas, NM. The fire lapped at the edges of mountain property he left to my husband. With the loss of this man, who had wonderful stories, comes the loss of a Spanish dialect unique to Northern New Mexico. He is one of the last in the generations of New Mexicans that speak this special dialect, more similar to Spanish from 400 years ago, and mixed with modern English; “Spanglish,” as many of my high school classmates referred to it. Growing up attending school run by missionaries, speaking Spanish was not allowed. My mother-in-law, who also grew up in Truchas, said that when she first went to school she didn’t know English. Most of the class did not. When they had to go to the bathroom, they would get up and stand at the door and try to look pitiful, like a dog that had to go out, she said, and hope that the teacher would get the idea and excuse them. She still tries to teach me things in Spanish, and has a great number of dichos and jokes to share. Still, my children know next to none as far as Spanish goes.
Things vanish. Things change. There is no permanence, only the discomfort of expecting it and being disappointed. For now I am trying to fill the void of the vanished with things of beauty, watercolors on paper, and sad songs on the piano. With Spirit Dwellings that inhabit the corners of my garden (and frighten my kids), grown from the choppings and trimmings of last year’s growth, and random things I find laying about the yard. I know that that absence will still be uncomfortable, and I will notice it still, and it will hurt from time to time, but tiny things of hope will begin to take root in the crevices of the grief, and eventually the scar will be covered in flowers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
<Previous Post
|
Next Post>
|