Bad fire is, uh, having a moment. Bad fire consumes homes, communities, threatens lives, fills the air with eerie light and a haze that can reach the other side of a continent.
But GOOD fire...well, for one thing, good fire could've prevented some of that. Many ecosystems need fire to be healthy. Fire burns off what needs to go — it kills what needs to die. Fire that makes room for new growth. There are trees that need fire to release seeds. There are animals that thrive in newly burned areas! And: there is alllll kinds of shit that needs to be burned down: choose your own oppressive global system. In October, we're telling stories of getting lit, walking through flames, burning it all down.
More about it from the Oct 7th email:
Immediately afterwards, there was a bracing clarity.
I (Rebecca) have kept a journal since 5th grade. While there was still smoke in the air, I wrote, “Everything has fallen into disrepair.” The garden plants were heavy with ignored vegetables, “too many left to go to seed and ruin.”
The days, weeks, and months following are burned into me. A moment in a grocery store with my brother, howling with unexpected laughter, the first time we’d laughed. My father helping me shell the beans I’d hung in the shed to save for seed. Rubbing my mother’s back while she cried in a new, unfamiliar home. I had been right: everything, everything, had been touched by the fire.
And, still, when I looked back later, I felt a kind of nostalgia for that time. It was not a good fire, but when the smoke cleared and there was only one thing to do — survive the grief — there was that clarity.
In A Paradise Built in Hell (a book I have not read but, thank God, Vince has evocatively told me about) Rebecca Solnit writes about the surprising resilience of communities in the wake of disasters (not the personal, familial kind). Not just resilience, but thriving — and joy. There is clarity of purpose, and the opportunity to help others.
As for the smaller-scale disasters, some people experience post-traumatic growth, which can include greater appreciation of life and relationships, increased compassion, seeing new possibilities, deeper spirituality, creative growth…
After a forest fire, not every species thrives. Some populations are devastated. But many ecosystems need fire. Many plants require the cleared space to grow at all. Some animals do particularly well in altered landscape. There are, yes, serotinous pine cones sealed with resin that need fire to release the seeds and still other plants that can’t germinate without the fire.
In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, it makes sense to focus on and feel that everything is in ruin. But it’s also true that often, there in the ash, there is something that has been waiting to grow.
Join us Sundays at 5 on the lawn for stories of getting lit, walking through flames, burning it all down — and finding out what comes next.