In the Aftermath of the Marshall Fire

The Marshall Fire destroyed 1,084 homes in Louisville and Superior Colorado on December 30, 2021. Photo: flickr user Gregory Kirk used under Creative Common license (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

How do we live with fire?

The flash tragedy that is the Marshall Fire resulted in the loss of home, life, and habitat and the effects will be felt for years in missing objects and fading memories and places and people that will never be the same.

Land that will never be the same.

So how do we live with fire.

The temptation is to try and insulate ourselves from it. Already open space officials in Lafayette are wondering aloud if the wildlife corridors they worked to create might become the next fire alleys. There is a rising voice in some corners of the public to simply mow all the grassland of a type that burned this fire so hot and fast. That the best way to save ourselves from the world we live in is to wall ourselves in and fortify our panic room with a broad moat of pavement. 

We could try that; we could use crude tools to try and subdue the threat.

We could find someone to blame and we probably will.

But neither puts the fire back in the matchbox nor snuffs the spark. None of that brings back what was lost.

We have to grieve. We have to feel our fear and righteous anger and be with them until they dissipate into sadness. I think we all know it was a matter of time and place only; fire was foregone and probably had been since the rain stopped in August. Each time those big Chinook winds freighted over the mountains and onto the dry plains we held our breaths that it wasn’t our turn, knowing it was someone’s.

And how do we live with fire.

I honestly have no idea but I know that if we are to live at all we have to do it in connection. We can’t stay in the panic room. Yes, in time we will discover ways to mitigate some of the terrain and biotic and landscape factors of grassland wildfires that rage into cities, but we can’t make it rain more. We can’t stop a 100 mph wind. We won’t move our houses farther apart or abandon the community we love, where we made memories and will make new ones and try to take the sting out of some of the old ones.

The land beneath our feet is what connects us to each other and everything else. We need to learn how to support it so it can support us and that is a balance that will be solved by care and by life. There has been tragedy enough, and yet we brace for more. 

For now we live with fire by learning how to run.