Fire Ruminations—And Our Future

Eucalyptus, Topanga, California

Ravens in the distance. Probably our winged neighbors dipping down into the canyon. Soon they will return to their perch in the great Pine just here overlooking the patio from which they can oversee the entire canyon. Gentle Boy, (and he is) the Husky is at my feet and the Bees, Yellow Jackets and Goldfinches are on the Buddha fountain before the heat which is coming, the late summer guest who demands so much of us and will overstay his welcome. 

Gentle Boy. Photo by Pami Ozaki

Tracing the feminine curves of the Eucalyptus trees, clearly maidens, I fear for the onslaught of Fire. That an elemental might regularly take down comrades in the natural world reveals how we have changed the nature of nature. Oh yes, there has always been Fire just as there have always been predators. But we have changed the ways of Fire and his appetite, the way we have distorted the psyches of animals who—having seen their mothers, fathers hunted and mutilated for keratin horns, tusk ivory, hippo teeth, or fur—prey on those they would never have attacked before. Our violence breaks the bond of relationship which has held the world together until we got out of hand with our meaningless desires.  I don’t want to burn to death, and I don’t want the trees, the Bees, the Deer and Mountain Lions to burn.

In La Vieja: A Journal of Fire, the old woman who occupies a Fire Lookout in the Sierras considers how she will evacuate if Fire demands it. But how will she take Bear and her family in her little car?  She is anguished.  She has already ‘seen’ Bear burning in a forest fire. 

A huge swath of bark drops down from a high branch of the Eucalyptus, the patio littered with bark, the trees stripping naked as if to meet whatever is coming, to be entirely bare before a possible conflagration. On Tuesday we will not be able to water outdoors for 2 weeks so a pipeline can be repaired and this restriction just now when the heat is increasing and Fire, angered by everything we have done, waits to pounce. The notice from the Department of Water and Power comes to me, but how do I explain the coming thirst to the trees?

Yesterday, I was engaged in a deep conversation with Lise Weil, editor of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, about the Literature of Restoration, a way of writing, a critique and a vision, an invocation of a new and also very old mind to meet the times. She was commenting on something I had written, “Not Hope but Possibility” in Second Wind: Words and Art of Hope and Resilience (Fireball Press, 2020).

“There is an enormous energy—infinite possibilities—that come from bearing witness and living accordingly.“

I don’t know if it is choice or happenstance that I eschew depression in response to our situation and become energized by the call to meet these circumstances. 

Maybe it is simply believing that if we are pushed by dissociated economic power interests into lifestyles that we know will kill us and our future, then, also, we can push back. These lives we are living are not necessary, are not natural or divinely inspired.  We can shift, we can change radically, we can vision—I believe it.

Lise was inspired by the energy of possibility and there will be benevolent consequences of her understanding, the proverbial pebble rippling the deep lake within the restored forest. Dark Matter will help to introduce the Literature of Restoration, as will the website I am launching shortly with Cynthia Travis and Annie Licata.

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I am thinking of the possibilities for a future for this poor beleaguered planet Earth. I am heart broken. But I still must ask: What are the possibilities that we might change the dire situation we are in? ….

Holding these questions is how I live. I go on because I am living the possibilities every day and such a life is focused, full of energy and determination…

To be truthful—and the Literature of Restoration demands truthfulness—I have no patience for those who say, they can’t face it all because they get too depressed and then they can’t function. To them, I say, tell that to Polar Bear mother whose ice, the land she needs to survive, is melting because of how we live and she and her cubs are starving. Tell that to Elephant mother, to the Matriarch. who is responsible for the entire herd but can’t find water or food and if/when she does, finally, the poachers descend and cut off her tusks while she is still alive and her calves are watching. Tell that to the Wolf pack which is running from the helicopters with marksmen shooting AK47s at them allegedly to protect the cows which members of our species will eat instead of the wolf pups who are now writhing in pain from bullets or dying without a pack to sustain them.  Their situation is grim and they are helpless before us. We are not helpless; we must not look away.

There is an enormous energy—infinite possibilities—that come from bearing witness and living accordingly. These are two actions that must be one—bear witness and live accordingly.  Change your life.  Let your heart guide you.  Become an ethical being. It is so very difficult and so very simple. Bear witness and change your lives accordingly.

…. Seeds of change lie in literature. A new literature can help create a viable world.

-Literature of Restoration

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There is now a little village of Raven families in the Pine and Pepper trees we have planted. And the Owl people are living in the great Oaks across the field. Raven in the morning, Owl at night.  Doe checked out the little grove behind the house and brings her off-springs to enjoy the cool under the trees. We keep a tub of water full in the orchard for the wild, the Mountain Lions, Bobcats, Coyotes, and more.

Many would like us to cut down the Eucalyptus and the Pines, which burn intensely when set on fire. I prefer to prevent the fires by planting more trees to absorb the carbon we are precariously releasing and thereby cool the land. (The patio is 15°F cooler than the adjacent bare field.) So, I will limit my own water consumption and give the right share to the trees, the way we feed our kids before ourselves when supplies are limited. There are a thousand ways we can restore the sacred natural world we were pushed into mutilating.

You have probably noticed that I have capitalized Mountain Lion, Coyote, Bee, Eucalyptus etc. This is the point of all of this. They are people. People that I care about and care about their lives as much as I care about mine and yours. That is one act of restoration to which we can devote ourselves. If we open to loving the natural world the way we love our own lives, if we reconnect ourselves with the original ways, we will stop being murderers of life. 

Photo by Joan Tewkesbury