Cabin Journal: After the Fire

I can’t help but grieve for everything that has been lost in the disastrous fire in the mountains of Boulder County. About 160 homes have been destroyed and 6,000 acres burned in the Fourmile Canyon fire.

While structures are easily replaced, if you have the insurance money, the landscape will never be the same. It’s not just the trees, grasses, and bushes that were destroyed in the fire, but the complex interweaving of human and natural factors. Over time, new growth accommodates itself to what’s already there. A sapling anchors its roots under a boulder, while other plants find water at its base. Another tree manages to grow in the leeward side of the first tree that provides some protection from fierce winds. Aspen trees, bushes and grasses lean against and wind their way through the wooden fences that mark property perimeters.

At my cabin the human and natural landscape are intertwined. Raspberry bushes have nestled up against the Bill Waite cabin, where they get water from the rain that drips off the roof. In my backyard, grasses and other plants have grown under the protection of the aspen trees, and rabbits and other small animals feed on these plants. And the ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits find safety under my decks from predators.

Most everything here has taken several decades at least (and more than a century for the ponderosa) to form this landscape, most of it haphazardly. It could never be replicated if destroyed. Something else, over decades, would emerge, equally as haphazard but different.

I’ve grown to love this tangled chaotic landscape. Every part is precious, perfect just the way it is, even the pile of logs on my neighbor’s property that the ground squirrels and chipmunks hide in, or the rusted water pump or weathered slabs of wood that comprise the shed. Everything has been left to evolve into a perfect state of equilibrium.

It’s just things, people say, but we each have a landscape we hold dear, where our hearts go especially when we’re in pain or sorrow. If we lose that, we find new places and new homes, but it takes times to discover the subtle things about the new landscape: how the setting sun lights up the aspens, where the rabbits like to hide, where I can stand to hear both Tahosa and Cabin creeks, how the morning sun hits the top of the ridge on the other side of the valley. You come to love these things, they become a part of you, and to lose them is as wrenching as losing a friend or lover.

And that’s why my heart goes out to those who have lost their homes in the Fourmile Canyon fire, because it’s not just a structure, not just trees; it’s a whole web of life and memories.