Minding the Garden

My mom sent me an email with a photograph that I love so much I framed. It’s of two deer in the midst of a wildfire, peacefully looking up at the camera as if nothing is wrong. It’s beautiful, and haunting. Until today, I could never understand why they were so calm, continuing to eat their grass, virtually unaware, or ambivalent, to the disaster happening around them.

It’s fascinating to come back to a city that I left behind so long ago. I left in 2001 when I was 25. In the past few weeks, I have bumped into people I haven’t seen in nearly ten years. I have visited with friends I haven’t seen in 4 or 5 years. I have stopped by several of my old watering holes and favorite places. I am a different person now. How could I not be? I’ve seen so many other things, met so many interesting people since 2001. If I weren’t any different, the journey would have been for naught.

I looked into some research on wildfires. The wake of burned flora they leave behind is devastating, and the news isn’t all bad. After a number of years, a forest gets cluttered, just like any other place that isn’t tended. It gets overgrown to the point that the light can’t get through to germinate new life below ground. Wildfires (not to be confused with forest fires, which are unnecessary and are true tragedies) help to clear that way; in a sense they make room for new life when the old life has lived beyond its usefulness. Even though the process is painful and long, regrowth happens, and what sprouts is often better than the life that was there before. I think my life, all of our lives, may be that way too.

Certain relationships, friendships, past times, places of interest were worthwhile when I was 25, though aren’t holding up at age 31. To be sure, this is a very small minority. I am blessed with a number of wonderful people in my life, a great deal of interests and hobbies, and I adore my city. There a few however that need to be rooted out, or at the very least trimmed back substantially in order to make room for the light and the space that is necessary to allow for newness and reinvention. It is a painful process to peel away what’s or who’s not working in my life anymore. It is the most difficult thing I can ever do. I actually hate the process and the hurt and pain that it causes, even if it is just one or two instances. The worst part is that I cannot just slip away – my actions are intentional and noticeable.

“A star has to burn itself up just to make itself alive.” I think these past few years have been about ripping up the model, cleaning house, tossing out what’s broken, tired, and can’t be repaired, shining up what needs some polish, and enthroning the many pieces that make me a better person. Clearing away the brush is necessary despite the fact that it is a struggle of the heart and mind to do so.

Wildfires can be contained, though there is no way to fully prevent them. And they shouldn’t be prevented. Just wade in the water until the flames on the banks die down. “This too shall pass,” as my mother says, and we will all be better for it. They are a necessary evil, and we must go on, through them. The deer in my photograph have understood this for quite some time. I am only now just coming to terms with it.

(The picture above is of deer seeking safety from a forest fire. Taken in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana on August 6, 2000 by John McColgan a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska with a Digital cameraDeer seeking safety from a forest fire. Taken in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana on August 6, 2000 by John McColgan a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska with a Digital camera.)