Fired up

We snuck away to Montana for five days, getting in some much-needed mental refreshment before pear season starts.  Once it does, our so-called regular life is suspended until harvest is in and the last pear sold. Summer is fun for most everyone I know, but around here when we say ‘peak season’ it’s a whole different ball game.

It was awesome to see our Montana friends, see the beautiful craggy mountains with remnants of snow, the still green meadows and valleys, and enjoy the refreshment of rain in June after our hills at home have already turned brown. I felt terrible for the windrows of hay that got dumped on, but that comes from being a hay farmer’s daughter and knowing how summer rains sneak up on you somehow just as soon as you’ve cut and raked. Leaving home is always a challenge; anybody who has property and animals knows it’s no easy feat. We’re lucky because we have a great ranch sitter and trust her great care of the animals. But still. To be gone is to be far away should disaster hit.

It’s hard to leave and not worry about how everything’s going and to turn your mind off enough to enjoy the time right before you. If you didn’t, you’d never leave and although it’s tempting, it would get people divorced and that’s not an option. You try push away the thought that a whole new season is right around the corner; what those of us in the west have come to know as fire season. The last few years we’ve watched the west catch fire and our own community has suffered through such devastating fires that we may never be the same. We’ve loaded up things ready to evacuate and have dodged that bullet but we know too many friends and neighbors and friends of friends who have lost everything to fire.

And so the last thing you want to hear when you’re states away is the Nixle alert telling you that the first fire of the summer has started and has grown from 50 acres to 7770 in 27 hours. I’d describe myself as easy going and calm most of the time, but that all flies out the window when it comes to fire and animals. I tried not to talk about it while Pat and I enjoyed the last 24 hours of our Montana trip; but the fact that I checked my phone obsessively in the limited cell service we had probably tipped him off. It was such a relief to get home late Sunday night, open the door and see the dogs, check on the horses and crawl into my own bed, to try to grab some sleep with one eye open while a fire they call a 'monster' blazes and burns another yet another part of our already wounded county.

This morning at work faces were grim as updates came in about the latest acreage burned and structures lost.  Firefighters from all over are here yet again, engaged in what now seems like a never-ending summer cycle as they valiantly battle to get some containment on the monster. Talking with a friend in the office we grimaced as we realized how sayings we used to take for granted have taken on a whole new tenor.  If you’ve seen the devastation fire can bring you realize that seemingly simple words or phrases like  'bonfire' and ‘fired up’ and such have to be put away never to be used again in honor of all that’s been lost.  What once seemed like a harmless saying now lingers in the air like smoke and ash and you realize that as the west has burned, fire has scorched our hearts and souls as well as our land.

As we were far from home and anxiety grabbed a hold of me, I took myself to task.  I don't want to live in fear.  I do believe in the words in the Bible  ‘Be anxious for nothing (don’t worry about anything) but pray about everything.  With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God.’  I believe them, but reciting them and enacting them are two very different things. As we flew across states on our way home I argued with myself about the futility of getting all jacked up when there was nothing I could do to speed up the time it took to get home. Be anxious for nothing. Well, to a can-do girl, to the can-do people I know, that’s easier said than done. I repeated that verse over and over in my head, but no matter how many times I did so, it still didn’t say ‘Do nothing, be anxious.’  All my mental thrashing around didn't make the plane fly any faster.  I realized that we can do what we can do – take fire safety measures, make a plan, make a grab and go list, keep it handy, have a plan A and B for your animals and yourself, and the rest is the rest.

Don't worry - but put every worry into prayer – I was finally getting somewhere with this 'be anxious for nothing' stuff.  When anxiety tried to take a hold of  my head, I grabbed a hold of it and turned that worry into an accounting of my blessings. It was amazing once I got started reciting them in my head just how long that list of gratitude was. My blessings are abundant. From the family I’ve been blessed with, to my dogs and Clementine the cat who found us (and has since kept the rattlers at bay), the small birds who greet me in the morning, the young bucks who have taken up residence in my barn (deer, not dudes), my extensive cowboy boot collection….the list goes on and on from seemingly small blessings to seriously huge and abundant. Like the fact that not only can I walk after my crash and burn, but that I can ride and ski and hike. My blessings are abundant.

When anxiety comes knocking on my bean, I will try to answer it like this.  With a thankful heart.  With a prayer that acknowledges my mortality and transience and my need, but with a prayer that rests on the confidence of those words ‘Be anxious for nothing, but present your requests along with your thanksgiving.’ 

 That’s all I can do, after I’ve done all I can. May you and yours (your people and your animals) be safe this summer, may you find peace after you’ve done all you can do, may you know rest rather than anxiety in the midst of this crazy season.   xoxo