Snow-Fire Forest

Crunch. Like cold, broken glass. We trod after one another, taking turns in the lead for two miles, gazes cast into the snow a few feet in front of us, following a coyote's trail. The coyote meets with others, they trot along side each other, cross paths, stop, dig under a log. I try to picture how they were moving in the early, pre-dawn light. Noses to the wind, following that insatiable call of hunger that rules all the beings of this frozen land.

We're not as equipped as we might be--we did not expect this much snow. We spend the week accommodating the temperature, the early darkness. We stop our tracking to make a fire one afternoon and dry our feet. We get up early and go to bed early to match the shortened days. I sleep cold, fitfully, then pile up pine needles to sleep on top of the second night. I am warmer now. 

The Forest Service performed a controlled burn near our campground in Teanaway, Washington, about two hours Southeast of Seattle, in Fall 2017. As a result, some of the standing trees are blackened all around their trunks and dying. The underbrush has been burned away, logs and lower branches gone. Places where fallen trees existed before the fire are lighter colored patches--a long, thin line of paler dirt where a tree used to be. Some chunks of charcoal on the edge of the line mark what happened. The fallen tree has left a reverse shadow. In other places, the fire burned through a tree or a stump and left nothing behind. I can peer in the hole in the ground where the trunk used to be and see where the roots branched out into the earth, the wood burned away. Nothing but empty space, tunnels through the earth, remains.

One morning, I walk to the river near our camp. The sun glitters off the snow and the crystal clear water. I can look through the rushing river to see the colored rocks below. The river bank holds its breath. I jump down the bank to the shore, then kneel in the frozen mud and snow, squishing the footprints of those who have been here before me. I plunge my head into the freezing water, submerging my face, the top of my scalp, up to my ears. I wait a three count, skin melting, thinking of nothing. When I lift my face out of the water and turn it towards the sun, I am ferocious, bursting with life. I am grounded in this moment, heart pumping, blood rushing to the tips of my fingers and ears in chorus with the river before me. Captivated, I plunge my face in again. A third time. The dream of my life swirls among the death of this frozen, burned-out landscape.  

Photo by Reverend Blue Sky (Noel Tendick).