Fire and Rain

The bees are busy in the wilderness. The blue star creeper is thriving, and has covered a wide swath of the west-facing slope. The red and white clovers are in bloom. Also in bloom are numerous dandelions, their long stems nodding in the breeze, each with a tiny sun affixed. Interspersed are some soft flowering grasses about a foot high. Hugging the ground are oxalis; spurge; purslane; creeping jenny; moss. Born this spring is the tender-sturdy seedling of some kind of tree we don’t recognize, similar to a black walnut and which looks almost like a fern, but which is neither. It might be the offspring of the neighbor’s frog-eye tree — the frog-eyes being red berries that follow a white bloom, and which cover the sidewalk early in the fall — not the ideal shade for our perimeter trail, but wilderness is wilderness. Then again, as rapidly as the cedar is growing, the seedling will be overwhelmed within a few years. Whatever the little tree is, it will have given its life for beauty.

While those in power cling to the self-damning behavior that drowns them in rivers of wealth, a large portion of society is consumed by violence, poverty, and guns.

One law of the wilderness is that where fire is needed, lightning will strike. Another law is that each drop of rain is well-timed. To lament one and praise the other might seem grand and civilized; but what is civilization worth if the wilderness is not loved and understood?

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