Wildfires

“Nana, are we driving towards the fire, or away from the fire?” Hazel asks me from the back seat. I take a quick glance into the rear-view mirror and see the mostly blue sky that we’re leaving behind, then look at the thick wall of smoke we’re driving into. It’s incongruous.

I woke early this morning after three or four hours of sleep and watched the red sky lighten, and turn blue as I rocked six-week-old Phoebe in my arms, my newest granddaughter. Her mama closed her eyes on the sagging sofa as my son snored in the bedroom below us. They would be packing up and leaving as well, heading back to the relative safety of the coast.

As a sleepy-eyed Hazel ate her bagel, I finished packing the car before taking my dog Rosie out for one last pee. It’s an impossibly clear, beautiful morning. Creepy and eerie. Ash covers my car, covers the picnic table, covers the swings. The remnants of the forest that has burned, that is still burning. The residue and remains of homes, of stores of gas stations.

Less than two minutes after we turn off our gravel road and onto the narrow, paved, lakeshore road, we cross the threshold into the smoke, leaving the pinhole of blue sky behind. I pray a silent incantation to all that is Divine, to the trees that surround us, to the Mother that enfolds us. Keep us safe, keep us safe, keep us safe.

“We have to drive a little ways in the direction of the fire,” I explain to Hazel, “in order to get to the road to drive away from it.”

I assure her won’t be getting close to the fire, just the smoke. I pray that this is true.

My country is on fire, and it looks and feels like Armageddon. British Columbia has declared a State of Emergency, experiencing yet another record year of wildfires. I grew up with forest fires, but nothing like this. Nothing like the entire province burning to the ground at once.

Hazel has been staying with me for the past week at our family’s lake house, where I live for two or three months every summer. On Shuswap Lake – the lake I grew up on, the lake of my hometown of Salmon Arm, where my mom still lives.

A place we call Tall Tree Retreat.
A place I call The Home of My Heart.

Yesterday evening the fire jumped the guard and jumped the highway, closing the highway west of us. We’ve been watching the Adam’s Lake fire as it continued to grow out of control, as it merged with the Bush Creek fire, as the winds whipped it and acted like gasoline.

As the fire burned through 20 kilometres in 12 hours.

I calculated the number of kilometres until it reached the entrance of our only-way-in-and-only-way-out road. If that happened, we would be forced to take our pontoon boat and head out to the middle of the lake, and float as ashes and embers landed over and around us. The other side of the lake was already burning. Communities already gone. People already stranded and being rescued by boat.

“I can smell the smoke.” Hazel wrinkles her nose as we drive deeper into the dark cloud of smoke. “Cloud” is the wrong word. There’s nothing light and fluffy about this. There’s only toxins and ash. It’s like driving into a pyre. An apocalypse.

“The lake used to be cheerful,” she says. “Now it’s haunted.”

She looks out at the empty docks and abandoned boats. Ghostly contours on the River Styx. Then she starts singing the song that’s been stuck in her head for days – Mary Had a Little Lamb – her voice strong and clear.

I join her, and together we sing our nursery rhyme prayer, paving our way forward with trust and faith. Because prayers take all shapes and forms, and I can’t think of a stronger one than the love between a child and her Nana. Between Hazel and me.

Half an hour later we reach the highway and finally turn away from the encroaching fires. I turn on the promised Harry Potter audible book that will accompany us on our long drive back to the coast, and I can feel Hazel relax into her happy place – listening to stories.

I don’t know if I’ll see my cherished lake house again. If the needle-point firs will still be standing when I return.

We drive through smoke, and I can’t shake the images of Lahaina. Of the stories I’ve read. Of the lives lost. Of the grief settling like ashes in the lives left behind.

Oh God. What have we done?

And then I hear Hazel’s magical laugh from the backseat, showering me once more with all that is possible. She is Shams and I am Rumi, spinning, spinning, spinning in her love.

Holding the grief and the mourning and the love and the awareness of the possible.

May those of us who can,
Hold in our hearts, those who cannot.
Until they can stand once more.
Until they can feel the butterfly flutters
Of their own tender hearts.

May the rain quench the fires and cool the earth.

Amen, Amen, Amen.