Oh, I've Seen Fire

My room smells of smoke, and not any sort of fun smoke either. Campfire smoke. Wood burning smoke. Forest fire smoke. About 15 miles from our house a 46,000 acre fire is burning in the foothills just west of Fort Collins. Over 100 structures have been damaged or destroyed, and one person lost her life. 1,100+ firefighters from many different states and Canada are fighting it round the clock, many of them in relentless 16-hour shifts...and they are losing.

I have multiple monitors at work, and for the past three days one of them was devoted exclusively to social media about the fire. I saw every Facebook status and photo posted by fellow Fort Collins folk and hundreds of tweets from the Larimer County sheriff, local papers, Denver papers, the Red Cross, national news agencies, acquaintances and darn near everyone who used the hashtag #highparkfire.

Facebook has become local and somehow remains decidedly global. My entire community of Fort Collins friends is posting about the fire, and friends far away give a look back into the normal everyday dronings of the world -- their work, their children, their jokes -- a world not focused on conflagration. 

I have overheard voices in the cube farm at work talking about their homes as they gaze at the most recent map and try to figure out if their property is on the right side of the red line. Like the smoke itself, the emotions of the fire -- anxiety, fear, worry, sadness, grief, hopelessness -- are seeping into everyday life. We are tired, snippy, and distracted. Our throats burn and we suffer headaches and sneezes. And we are lucky. Lucky that we live at 40°33′33″N 105°4′41″W and not a few meridians west.

Lightning started this fire and it's likely that Mother Nature will also be responsible for its end, but man is fighting as hard as possible to make a difference. I am in awe of the men and women putting up the fight with pick axes, chain saws, flamethrowers (fight fire with fire), bulldozers, airplanes and helicopters. 

The land will be devastated for years to come, and I am remembering our honeymoon in 1998. We visited Yellowstone a decade after it's 800,000 acre fire. There were signs of new life, but the scars remained, and I know this is the fate of our foothills... the backyard we've played in together for the past 18 years Homes will be rebuilt or not, but our children will be grown by the time the forest recovers, if it ever does... 24 years later, Yellowstone is still in recovery: Satellite slide show.


At the same time I am utterly fascinated by the power of this force knocks us humans flat on our asses with its power. I drove a couple of miles out of my way after work tonight to get the best vantage point for seeing as much of the mountains I could at once. This is the result. It was a lonely moment on east Horsetooth road, and I didn't/couldn't linger long. 

I am not/am no longer a faithful person, so I am a bit befuddled by the tweets and statuses that I see calling for prayer in times like these. I want to know, but have enough social grace not to ask individuals right now, exactly what difference prayer can make. if God can keep firefighters safe, why not obliterate the fire when it was 2-acres, or 2 feet, or keep the lightning out of dry forestland, or make the rains come Saturday? This is not a heartless position -- I too want the fire to stop and the houses to be saved and the firefighters to be safe, and for things not to have to get worse before they get better. If prayer is hope, maybe we are on the same page. 


I've seen fire... I'd like to see a little rain