After a Fire

Last week we hiked through the remnants of last winter. The purity of wood covered in white stills the soul and I kept thinking of Frost's poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and wondering whether snow are the mountains' way of healing themselves once a year.

This week we hiked through the scars of a fire that tore through the park and left swaths of black trees and pounds of ash and, even still, the slight smell of campfire.

Quite the difference.

The kicked up ash smudged our legs and the blackened trees offered no protection from the sun; and what business, really, would something so badly burnt have in trying to help make someone's path a little easier?

The beauty caught me off guard, in all it's charred glory.

Maybe because, as we've come to find out, sometimes a forest has to burn before it can keep growing. Something has to clean out the brush, and driftwood, and all the things that tend to build up over years of sitting. 

As we came upon a lake, it seemed the earth was soaking in the ash & learning how to live again.

And then, the best part. A sea of green at the base of a mountain of black. Life was beginning again in the valleys and working it's way up the mountainsides. 

And I wondered if, after all is said and done, a fire couldn't bring some sort of healing, too?