Finding our fuel
As fire blows through our country
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I feel like a chestnut tree caught in a prairie burn.
While our president gives the finger to the courts, Congress cowers in the corner. We have troops in the streets of L.A. and mass deportations without due process. Entire countries are banned from travel to America. Banning Americans from leaving can’t be far behind.
It’s nearly impossible to believe that we’re now suffering the same ascendence of oligarchy we’ve only read about in Turkey, Bulgaria and Russia.
That’s why so many Americans are still in denial.
Not me.
I’ve decided I’m a tree.
When the wind is against us
Years ago, we hired an earth mover to carve old farm terraces into swales and berms. Then we planted fruit and nut trees on them.
Above and below the terraces, former cropland now grows prairie. Some people call this “paying farmers not to farm” because it’s a government program. We call it “holding the soil where history put it instead of tilling every Spring so a gulley washer can send it down river.”
One day a few years ago, I decided to burn the prairie below the chestnut orchard. Autumn olive and dogwood had moved in like the squatters they are. My job as temporary steward is to roust them with fire before they get too comfortable.
I called a young friend attending Cornell College. “Wanna set a prairie on fire?”
“Sure,” she said, not so sure, and I went to get her. Meanwhile, Paul filled the back of our electric utility vehicle and watered down the firebreaks – wide swaths of mowed green grass designed to contain the fire.
In the two hours it took to get this much done, the wind had picked up. I didn’t notice.
I lit the drip torch and dropped the fire.
Within minutes, flames were whipping through the tall grass and well into the firebreak. My friend was lost in the smoke, daintily spritzing flames with her backpack sprayer like she was putting out a lit match. I yelled and yelled for Paul but he had gone back to the house to reload water.
My neighbors saw the chaos from a mile away, or maybe they heard me shouting like – well – the place was on fire. They came tearing down the lane in their old farm truck with rakes and water to save the day.
When it was over, the tell-tale black of burned prairie and scorched grass ran through the first row of chestnuts. Plastic tree shelters were melted onto trees in grotesque forms. The trees themselves were blackened just enough for me to worry, but not enough to declare them dead just yet.
Coming back from the fire
Yesterday I finally cut down the last dead tree. Before the burn, it had grown a dozen feet tall. It has produced for a few years. It was finally acting like a chestnut tree.
After the burn, it became a bare-branched testament to my failure…
or had it?
I couldn’t resist. I pushed away tall grasses and uncovered where we’d optimistically piled wood chips around the base this Spring. Leaves peeked out from the bottom of the dead trunk. It had resprouted!
These trees are seedlings. So long as those roots aren’t burned through, tilled up or poisoned, they can make a new tree. Not all trees come back from a fire, but every one that does is a cause for celebration.
When magic happens, we get a second chance.
There is no “fire season” anymore, they say. All year is fire season in America right now. The winds are blowing hard against democracy and our traditional firefighters – the Supreme Court, Congress, even our armed forces – have turned off the water and gone home.
I don’t have a name for the magic we need in the world today. You could call it love or hope, God, justice or fear. Maybe it’s therapy or good meds. Whatever you call it, take the time to dig deep and find your fuel, that ability to fight for something greater than each of us, our very democracy.
American roots run deep and strong. It’s on us to find our fuel so we can come back from this fire.
The latest from Draco Hill
Looking to re-energize? Come to our FREE Potluck on the Prairie.
6 pm Sat. June 21st sandwiched between the Cedar River and the prairie.
Pull up and park within yards of the party!
Celebrate the longest day of the year,
meet new people and old friends,
eat, drink and watch the sun go down over the water.
fish or camp,
bring an instrument to play,
stay for a little while or the whole time.
We’ll have s’mores and hot dogs. Bring the kids! They’ll love it.
Sign up here so we know what you’re bringing, thanks.
Thanks for reading and sharing Postcards with your friends! Here’s a prairie fire video for you - turn up the volume.