SEIZING SUNRISE

                A Fort Davis, Texas Wildfire Lies Behind a Chisos Mountain Sunrise in Big Bend  

Wildfire of Biblical proportions recently ravaged the serenity of our Texas mountains. Wildlife, livestock and human residents greeted that first day’s sunrise as they had greeted so many. By sunset, many were homeless; many more were displaced, wondering their home’s fate. Some Fort Davis residents endured a series of evacuations, moving from one presumably safe haven to another as the traveling inferno raced through the dark of night, creating its own terrible and erratic weather. Those of us living a handful of miles outside the boundaries of the (ultimately three hundred thousand-plus acre) Rockhouse Fire spent that first anxiety-filled night taking an emotional mental roll call of those we care about (which, surprisingly, even included the village idiots, town bores and thorns in our sides). We tried not to imagine the screams of animals trapped by fences yet to burn, the terror of calves and fawns too young and weak to outrun the flames. We slept little, flames illuminating the sky.

The Davis Mountain region breathed and panted in an information vacuum, without electricity, phone service, water. In the best of times, cell phones in Far West Texas enjoy erratic service and vast dead zones; that night, texting ultimately proved the only technology that worked, with terse, increasingly frightening texts from my brother in Midland our only updates on the fire’s path.

 We live in a blind canyon; unable to contact anyone and without radio or television, we periodically drove the couple of miles out to the road to see where the fire was. We made these frequent fire checks until conserving fuel for evacuation became a concern. The road to the east, the Scenic Loop to Fort Davis had closed mid-afternoon, right after we left town—right before the fire ripped open our historic town. (Our only available evacuation route lay west, to distant Van Horn.) At four a.m., the fire outside the bedroom window grew brighter. Coughing, we piled sleepy animals into the truck. We needed to know what was coming. And, what was gone.

The smoke proved so dense, we U-turned before reaching town. We parked at historic Point of Rocks, the first Butterfield Overland Express stagecoach stop between old Fort Davis and El Paso. Still not knowing the fate of town, friends, community, we watched a moving column of flame, flame that stretched the twenty-three miles from Fort Davis to Marfa advance toward Alpine. The sun rose, finally. It was a beautiful sunrise. The sun is brighter than fire.

The fire burned for over three weeks.

Much has been written about the largest wildfire ever recorded in Texas. We survived, our picturesque tourist town is still there, no human lives were lost and the mountains will be greener for having burned. But it touched our lives profoundly. Long before the smoke cleared, a universal need “to help” swept Jeff Davis County and neighboring Brewster County. Offering manual labor, performing small favors, rendering financial assistance … even tiny things, filling bird feeders or saying “thank you” have assumed new meaning. The fire didn’t touch us out here. Like so many others, we’ve helped where we can. And yet, many nights during the fire’s reign, I put my head to my pillow feeling inadequate.

We are part of the same communal organism. What one suffers affects all. Like blood cells and nerves and muscles and neurons, we each have our specialty, a function in keeping the organism that is Community healthy. Or, in healing it.

I finally made my peace with the fire by painting. It wasn’t an easy peace. I cried a lot, and my hundreds of pastel sticks remain packed, temporarily. Should we need to flee suddenly, I wouldn’t have had time to pack so many delicate sticks. (I keep a much smaller set with me for painting on location, but my meticulously arranged studio set has been acquired over a lifetime and takes up a banquet table in the studio; I’d abandon framed paintings before I abandoned my pastel sticks.)

Since the fire began, I’ve painted only in oils, my first painting medium.

During the fire, I painted sunrises.

I’m small, not terribly young nor strong and not awfully rich. I wheeze at the first whiff of smoke. I’m not handy with a hammer; we don’t have a pasture to loan to homeless cattle nor a bedroom to house a homeless neighbor.

But I can paint a sunrise to make someone’s heart leap. I know sunrise is brighter than fire. I understand how to seize joy and I understand how to translate it for sharing.

As I see it, that’s my function in the organism.

 

SEIZING THE SUNRISE   24" x 36" oil copyright Lindy Cook Severns 2011

Sunrise on the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend in Far West Texas

For more images of West Texas and the West, visit my website LindyCSeverns.com
or the online studio gallery store at OldSpanishTrailStudio.com