Wyoming, August 2012

Join me here on the trail, and let’s rest, press our hands against our knees to ease the straps of our packs until they feel young and limber enough to continue stepping down and down to South Fork’s meadows. Here, where green grass and timberline break to the burn’s mean edge, where heat split stone to sharp slabs, where the earth baked to dust and ash powdered fine, where trees twist in blackened fingers that claw for blue sky, and where the thick smell of smoke lingers. But also, do you hear within the char the stream’s sweet chime, see the slender shoots that will grow and green with time? Our big tree, halfway down the ridge’s breakneck slope, clings with roots half-singed to earth gone black and reaches with living, rising limbs towards clouds. Those flowers springing from dark soot echo sparks, their petals red, orange, vibrant now, after fire gorged and fled along the ridge until, rim-rocked, it turned back, consumed its own licking tongue, left blessed trees untouched to seed the flame-tilled ground for saplings yet to come.