Art is a reflection of life, and wildfires are part of life in the arid west. Since my husband volunteer firefights now, I'm trying to understand our dramatic and fairly frequent blazes more than I fear them. 

The suddeness of fire out here can be stunning. In spring, our super-dry season, sparks from passing cars, motorcycles, welders, even cigarettes can ignite white-dry grass that wouldn't have burned on a bet back when it was green and busy growing waist-high. We're careful with our machinery, we urge tourists to exercise extreme caution with campfires, we observe burn bans, but still, fire happens.

A lone lightning strike from a rogue thunderhead is often the culprit; a series of strikes from widespread storms isn't unheard of in our large county decorated with rugged mountains above far-ranging grasslands. We pray for rain, then hold our collective breath. One lightning strike is all it takes. (Years ago, close friends lost their house to a lightning strike and watched photos, recipes, family heirlooms burn before help could arrive. They remain scarred by that experience, but they're stoic about the fires that periodically sweep the ranch. It's just nature, they explain. Part of life.)  An amazing group of volunteers with the same training as paid professionals regularly keep our county from going up in smoke.  Once Jim joined their ranks, fire took on a new persona: like a bad inlaw, it became part of our family.

One moment, Jim and I are going about our lives, doing whatever it is we're doing that day; the next moment, Jim's pager is blaring a shrill message that all available hands are needed to gather at the firehouse some twenty miles away.  Fire pages aren't so different than those phone calls that once came at all hours to summon us to go forth into the fickle skies to aviate. Those phone calls came often enough to produce regular paychecks, and we didn't enjoy the option of saying we were sick, or entertaining guests, or too busy to fly. (Although the parrot does a great fire truck siren, he hasn't yet imitated that awful page-out, and for that, we're grateful.)
 
It isn't being on call that concerns me during fire season. I'm used to dropping what I'm doing, to changing plans in a heartbeat. Volunteer firefighting is a cakewalk, compared to living on 24-hour call as a corporate pilot.  Jim (who started this post-retirement career after he went on Medicare, btw) sensibly doesn't respond to every fire. Although I'm always relieved when he steps through the door smelling of smoke and sweat, I don't spend undue energy worrying about the risks my man takes—things like tromping up and down mountainsides in the dark and setting backfires—those deeds are his venue now, and he's a big boy. I'm not adverse to risk-taking. I've gotten way too close to God at 41,000 feet and also, a few feet above ground level to deny anyone their chosen risks.
 
What I'm not used to is Jim rushing off without me to risk his life while seeking to control something I don't understand.  Flying has its own set of terrors, but I understood those. So now, I'm learning about fire.  
I don't want to fight it, but I do want to understand and appreciate fire for what it is.
 
Why demonize nature?

One morning a few months ago, I was somewhat simultaneously(1) shampooing the carpet while (2) cooking a meal to deliver to a recovering friend while (3) repotting houseplants, since I'd already hauled them all outside while I did my carpet cleaning. The fire page went off. We raced into action: I drove Jim out to the highway to meet the firetruck, already headed toward a wildfire near Valentine, about 25 miles west of us.

Back home and now, behind schedule, I apologetically stuffed the houseplants back into their original pots; I hauled the rented carpet cleaner out and heaved it into the truck bed, straining my back in the process. I finished cooking, then rushed the food I'd prepared into town, where I passed it to a mutual friend who was there, waiting on the steps of our little museum after her volunteer stint. (She lived near my convalescing friend, and this scheduled handoff saved me another hour's drive.)  I rushed back home as rain and thunder and lightning crashed around the mountains without getting anything very wet. The sky was magnificent though.

Jim called to report that there were now over two dozen fires burning in Jeff Davis county. Almost more fires than people. Not good.  Not to wait supper on him, for sure. They were moving to a new fire on the other side of the mountains. Could I see it?

Luckily, I could not. Home seemed safe enough to leave. I grabbed my camera, loaded up the dog and the parrot and set out driving west on highway 166 to see what I could see.

I sighed my relief: All the fires were distant ones. Just distant enough to paint the cumulonimbus clouds in every quadrant of the sky in rich, warm colors. Those clouds, I understood. (I was glad I was down on the ground looking up at them instead of up there, looking for a way down through them.) I started taking pictures of clouds. I snapped shot after shot, stopped a dozen times to study the colors of fire and sun and cloud. I drove ten or fifteen miles west, then happily backtracked. I drove almost to Fort Davis. I kept watching for new fires, watching the lightning, snapping pictures of the amazing skies, different skies in every direction now. Nature's fireworks.

Sunset. Storm. Fire.
Breathtakingly beautiful nature on a tear.
The sun burned through towering walls of clouds and painted the mountains in colors I cherish.
The storm was magnificent in its scope. I knew and respected the storm for what it was.  I imagined banking through caverns in clouds, tiptoeing past sleeping monsters full of turbulence and hail.
I watched a beautiful glow dimming behind the mountains. Was that the fire my husband was fighting now?
I realized I was no more afraid of the fire than I feared the clouds.
I could paint that fire.
And so, I did.


"LIGHT OF A DISTANT FIRE"      copyright Lindy C Severns 2009
11" x 17" pastel on archival Wallis paper  $1600 framed

*see or purchase this painting during September 2009 at the 
 KHAA juried art show    Old Fort Country  Fort Davis, TX 

visit OldSpanishTrailStudio.com to see more scenes of Far West Texas
                                              and support your local firefighters!