Fire is Dry and Hot, But Nothing Can Stop A Yucca Plant

 

Thursday, March 31 (2022) 6pm

Fire is Dry and Hot, But Nothing Can Stop A Yucca Plant

 The air after a wildfire, in the surrounding land untouched, is hot—a repressive dryness suffocating the ones left.  Among the charred remains of the burned ground stands the Yucca, impermeable by flame, a magical sight.  The blackened trunks of trees and shrubs belie the flames that flooded the land just 2 nights prior and show signs of resilience.  The creek bed now lays bare and exposed, open in its meandering across the charred land.  Wildlife paths are untouched resistant to flames. The hotter areas lay blackened in ashes as a giant campfire.

 After yesterday’s rain, the new green shoots of prairieland grasses are already protruding from the black land, unstoppable, even blessed by those same ashes that threatened to destroy the forest. On the hogback, the flames thwarted by the rocky soil and dormant winter grasses, had little to burn in Spring. Afterall, the remnants of last week’s snowfall still lay in pockets of shade. 

 I sense wildness in the land here once again as I did just month ago before our last big snowfall, when a chill like an omen poured down from the alpine wind off the edge of the Rocky Mountains.  Yet this time, it is the wildness of a fire ravaged land in deep contrast to winter’s chill.  Birds, deer, coyote and other wildlife will emerge again in wait of what growth might be born here as Nature’s Way is honored, heeded and made to bring us a fertile land rising from the ashes.