A spark of hope
A new essay, thoughts on summer, and unplugging
Happy summer, online family!
I was all set to take some much needed time off this summer when my editors at the fantastic Hidden Compass asked to move up the pub date of a very personal essay that’s also an excerpt of my book. Because this is a dream pub, I hustled. I was able to tweak edits while on assignment in Hawaii, fine-tune fact checking while on our family’s 50-mile urban walkabout of San Diego, and now I am so happy to share this piece with you.
This publication is a bit different than others because they don’t take ad money to pay writers. Instead they fundraise from readers to support telling these important stories. If you enjoy the piece, please help share it with your communities, and if you have it in you to support their campaign, please toss a few bucks our way.
Either way, I am so humbled to share this very personal story with you.
Here’s a little excerpt:
Lifeless Douglas firs draped over the crisped thicket, almost entirely blocking out the sun. A creek cut through the charred land, though I could not locate signs of life in this pocket of forest. One tree had burned so hot, it completely vaporized. All that remained was a white imprint on the earth, outlined like a body.
Hiking past scorched remains in Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Bouverie Preserve, more than a year after wildfire had devastated the hills of Sonoma County, it didn’t seem possible that this landscape would ever fully recover.
In 2017, the Tubbs and Nuns Fires had incinerated thousands of acres of Napa and Sonoma county wildlands, killing 25 people and countless animals and swallowing nearly 7,000 structures. The media depicted the fires as an anomaly, even though 53 years earlier, another fire had left a similar footprint across almost exactly the same landscape.
At Bouverie, not far from the hamlet of Glen Ellen, I carefully stepped into the footprints left by the hiking boots of prescribed fire specialist Jared Childress, following him into the charred redwood grove. His deep voice reverberated through the canyon as he pointed out the effects of the wildfire having burned hot into the canopy on this side of the creek.
I hadn’t come here to witness the destruction, or for proof of the impacts of worsening wildfires. As a Californian, I already felt it viscerally — friends and neighbors racing from their homes; the rest of us shuttering inside sweltering houses for weeks in the hottest time of the year, rationing water and watching ash rain on our gardens. As a mother, fear kept me up at night. My younger son’s asthma was worsening.
I had arrived in those burned-out hills seeking a spark of hope — or, maybe, confirmation that I should get my family out now.
I wasn’t the only one searching for material to build from: Childress and I had joined a few members of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, basket weavers who had come to gather hazel leaves and shoots. Forged by the 2017 wildfires, these new growths had reached the right age to be used for weaving baskets.
That cool spring morning, Childress explained how more Western ecologists like him were starting to steward California’s forests in collaboration with Yurok tribal members and other Native people, who have embraced fire as a requisite tool to tend the land for at least 12,000 years.
He insisted we could — actually, that we must — change our relationship to fire.
“Yes, but—” I had started to say, my eyes focused on the scorched earth under my feet. I stopped myself short of asking, What if we're too late?
Taking some time off
This past year and a half, hell, this past five years, have been intense for a lot of us. So I want us to take a little pledge that this summer we are going to regenerate ourselves. I want us to all come back refreshed after the summer, ready to the important work of raising good humans, stewarding our planet, and being good community members. But first we must tend to our own bodies, minds and spirits.
I look forward to hearing how you take care of yourselves during our little hiatus.
See you soon, familia.
xo Michele