Late summer and everything is on fire, or so it seems. Literally, fire is raging on bone dry land, consuming anything within its path. Metaphorically, of course, emotions are flaming, a virus is engulfing thousands, the planet is getting hotter, as are tempers. There was a small(ish) fire in the bosque last week, quickly contained and extinguished. I was drawn down there to see and smell for myself what the aftermath was like. There is a quiet beauty to the destruction of a fire. There is also a reminder of the cycle of life; birth, death, re-birth. Forests can recover, nature heals itself, if we can stay out of the way..

There was a clearly defined line along which the fire in the bosque raged. Blackened trees and grasses hit a point where the destruction stopped. Flowers were still present, birds and bugs still floated in the air. The thicket of the bosque is dense in the summertime. One can easily get lost in the deep of it; sometimes you need to look to the sky to remember which direction is east or west. The fire, surprisingly, cleared a path to the river that I had never seen before. As I wandered out of the burn zone, I saw the waters of the Rio Grande through a now clearing in the twisted underbrush. Fire can take, but it can give as well.