—David McCloskey, © Sept 8, 2020

Prologue

BC is burning, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, N California too….
Wildfire’s become a constant refrain of life here….
Our forests are truly “fireforests”–but its become far more intense:
more fires, wider spread, drier conditions, more dieback due to drought
and insect infestations, larger conflagrations, increasingly catastrophic
making its own “fireweather,” and incinerating organic humus and
glassifying sandy soils, repelling rain…. All intensified by climate change–
its magnitude, frequency, duration, intensity–and human encroachment of wildlands….

Hazardous smoke spreading widely into urban areas, making
it hard to breathe, dangerous to the vulnerable among us….
This seasonal is from a wider meditation on the great formative
Energies of Cascadia–Tectonics & Earth-Forces: Volcanos, Earthquakes,
Tsunamis, etc., Winds & Storms, Wildfire, Ice, Floods, Flora, Drought, etc.
Here a combination of Wind and Fire in the easterly FireWind blasting
downslope thru Western Oregon over Labor Day in 2020…. Eerily echoed
in the massive unprecedented heatdome and catastrophic fire in Lytton,
B.C. June 2021.
A timely meditation for late summer in Cascadia any year, but
increasingly so as the pulse of Climate Change quickens….

Riding the FireWind

Sounds like raining   but this is dry
warm   hot breath   as the evening wears on—
I hear it sifting down    all around—
      soft slow   susurrus   of falling ash—
impossibly thin   feathery flakes
striking an alder leaf here    and
the lake’s still surface    over there…

Whitish-gray will-o-wisps
dancing through the miasma—
as ghosts of mountain forests suddenly materialize
far away here at the coast,  de-etherialize—
as if this heat is drawing   some essence
out of the murk   the way
cold dry air   sublimates snow…

      In the dark of candlelight   at first
      its hard to tell the swarm of insects
      from ash falling—then see the ash
      flakes swirling   randomly   in all directions
      while insects     zoom to the light…

As if a volcano had erupted again,
but this time it’s not that sharp-edged
blown glassy-froth rock that cuts and
grinds everything down,   but organic—
chunks of wood, long pleated fibers,
green needles, corky bark—something
once living
      incinerated…

Covering everything in a gritty crust
this ash is fine grained, not like
whispy embers from a hearth fire…
Look close  &  you see
brown slivers  &   tree shards
mixed in with gritty sand    as if
the whole tree & sandy soil
vaporized—when sap boiled over &
the whole tree suddenly  exploded—
lifted bodily high up    sucked into the sky

carried away in a towering pyroculumuli
roiling down valley    continued immolating
flying thru the air   caught in the inferno of

            flaming ghost trees   riding the
                        FireWind  out of  the East
far to the west    I followed its burning tongue
      billowing far out          over the open ocean…

Gray-brown shards & grit of the once living–
all that’s left   of a whole forest & community–
      wafted high   into the clouds
      even over the ocean    you can still
      see chunks of wood    dislodged,
      disgorged   thrown to the far winds…

            “The  FIRE   this time!”—
                  How   our    world     comes      apart…

—David McCloskey, © Sept 8, 2020

A Final Footnote

There are many heroic and tragic stories of those affected by the fire, but perhaps none more poignant than that of the eminent Nature writer, Barry Lopez, battling cancer, who lost his cabin at Finn Rock and many years of writings and notes–some not yet published–all consumed in the flames…Tasting those ashes in his mouth, he passed beyond soon after… some say he died of a broken heart….