2020 and Little Fires Everywhere

Photograph by Noah Berger. Original here.

As if this year could get anymore apocalyptic

The raging wildfire about 30 miles from where we live

Is not the only one

That’s burning our nation

Yesterday

Colorado’s Grizzly Creek Fire got “demoted”

As the Fires from Northern California

Took its place as a National Carnage

What’s 11% of 29 thousand acres?

That’s 25 thousand acres of magnificent greeneries (and counting)

That won’t come back

All of last week

The air in downtown Edwards was thickened with smoke

Stray ashes float loose like dancing baking powder

And people stopped showing up at our neighborhood playgrounds

For fear of inhaling smoke to an unhealthy level

I broke down on a Friday

For the thread I was hanging on turned out to be so fucking fine

The ability to walk to sunrise & sunset everyday

Fresh air

And the gentle embrace of Mother Nature

All across the country

Forests are burning

Towns evacuating

People barely scraping through

And the scariest thing?

It’s not even the worst thing that has or could happen this year

But

Remember 2020

As the year everything is burnt to the ground, figuratively and literally

Cruelty from our government

Negligence towards the Earth

Violence against one another

And humanity is stripped naked

Down to the core

To reveal who we really are

What we are made of

And how we want to move forward

When little fires are already everywhere

It only took one wind to burn the whole thing down

So perhaps

Tiny little new shrubs can emerge from the ashes

And give humanity one more chance.

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Read more: Little Fires Everywhere, California Wildfires, Grizzly Creek Fire , 2020, 92 large fires burning 1.2M acres across the country