Wildfire

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. - Elisabeth Kugler-Ross

My Suffering

The gateway to my transformation

Like escaping a wildfire, I have been running through the wilderness from the behemoth of my pain. It came upon me unexpected and most unwelcome. Seemingly minding my own business and relishing in the thick of the forest, marveling at it’s beauty, the storm began. 

At first it seemed so far off in the distance that it wasn’t going to come my way or consume me. So I slowly turned and started walking. The winds shifted and before I knew it… it was surrounding me and burning everything in sight. I began to run. Running and running and running. Sometimes the smoke was too thick for me to even know what direction I was going. Towards the fire, away from the fire, I couldn’t tell. No instinct would function. Fight or flight. Survive. 

No one from out side could help, no one from outside could see in. The smoke was too thick. The raging fury of the fire was too deafening for me to hear a word anyone was screaming at me. I listened strained and desperate, but if I stopped long enough to hear, the fire would catch up to me. 

Running still, the fire would nip at my heels, dart in front of me, singeing my sides, it may have enveloped me for a moment, but I kept running. The flames would wither with my speed. I can feel my heart pounding and my muscles aching. Breath becoming short. Dirty tears drying on my face as they fell. I have no energy to speak, no energy to think. I’m not a runner, but all I can do is run. How else do you survive a wildfire? I am running where there is no trail. I am running across downed trees, through bushes, on thorns. 

Everything is taking it’s toll and I feel I may not get out of this alive. I fall to my knees, there is no one to pick me up and drag me out. Then 2 presences appear as I imagine one reaching out to me. How does she have the strength to lift me when she too has been running? Whether it was my imagination misconstrued by the smoke I’ve been inhaling or whether it really happened, I do not know. I am running with these 2 now. Heart still pounding and legs pumping, we make it to a meadow. I start to yell that we made it! We made it! We made it! We are out of the fire. We all laugh and yell for our lives have been spared. We actually ran from a fire and survived! I hear them cheer with me. I turn to look and I see no one else with me. They have vanished into thin air. I am alone. 

Did I run from this fire and survive? I am only at the meadow. I do not know. The fire is still raging and the winds are still bringing it closer yet. There are a lot of people here now, and we are being shuttled out of this madness by volunteers in cars who pick up as many people as they can and then rush them off and out of the forest. I will wait to see if I can catch a ride… 

From great tragedy comes great beauty. From great tragedy comes great beauty? The depth of my soul keeps digging. Hasn’t it dug deep enough? What is it trying to find?! I feel as though it’s dug to the other side of the earth already! Maybe it’s trying to find the world on the other side. I always heard that if you dug in your backyard for a certain amount of time, you’d end up in China. Could this be what it’s looking for? A new world? Could it be digging for so long that we actually end up somewhere else? Like a “mole who is burrowing his way to the sunlight.”* And like that mole it knows there's something there so strong?

“Soon you will see me, for I will be all around you. Where I come from, I can't tell.... Don’t be alarmed by my fields and my forests. They are here only for you to share…”*

*Ray Thomas, Justin Hayward.