Fire

Letter to the future: My dad used to tell me of a time, a summer, where there was a different wildfire every week. I grew up in Arizona; not necessarily the wettest place in the U.S. People would always throw cigarettes out of the car or forget to put out a camp fire and then all hell would break loose. The grass would yield to the fire; maybe mistaking it for rain because it hadn’t seen rain for so long. My dad told me of a time where the largest fire in state history was up to the north and, another fire, was creeping through the canyons behind his childhood home. When my father saw the other fire on t.v. he really hadn’t thought anything of it; maybe a little sadness but it was a fire he couldn’t control so he thought nothing of it. When the fire made it up to his house, though, he felt like he had to have a say.

He felt like this fire, yes, he had control over somehow. Even though it was the same beast, the same flames that the grass had bowed too, he looked at it differently now that it was close to him. He had to evacuate; stand in the background of a town in chaos while he wondered if his house was still there. Even when the fire was gone and he was able to go back to his house the landscape had changed. The house was still there, ya, but the charred remains, the passing of the fire could be seen. My dad, though, felt fine when he got home back in his bed. The effects of the fire could still be seen; were still in the open but my dad still felt no remorse. Scars would stay for many years; the charred yard taking a long time to grow back but, my dad couldn’t figure out why he didn’t feel any of that initial hate toward the fire when he retold the story. It wasn’t until he had left high school and gone to college that he realized why; his family had made it through.

Everything that mattered had made it past the fire; his family, his house and his life had been thrown out intact from the chaos. Now that he had left for college; he realized what the fire had tried to take away from him when he wasn’t ready. The fire needed to come to make my father realize what was important to him at that point in his life. Through fire comes realization; even if the scars remain after many years. Some people will see the scars but, if the realization is great enough the scars will be worth it.