There are about 15 books on my night stand; at least one overstuffed
book shelf in each room, except the kitchen.
Volumes of intriguing stories, beguiling prose, insight,
wisdom: right there next to me, waiting to be chosen. Tonight I’m looking for
guidance, not a journey. I’m searching for a turn of phrase, discrete
observation, permission: to say the right thing.
So, of course I turn to Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World. What else? It is full of encouragement
laced with quotes about writing by writers.
Gems like “We are all a paradoxical bundle of rich potential
that consists of both neurosis and wisdom,” – Pema Chodron.
“Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to
remember,” – Willa Cather.
(a favorite). Then there’s
“To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent
the universe,” – Carl Sagan
and:
“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is
communicated by small details intimately observed,” – Ernest Hemingway.
This has to be the only instance I actually like anything
Hemingway said. And dang it, it’s a good one. There’s a shred of pathos in it.
Cuyamaca isn’t a Hemingway-esque African veldt, but it is the entire
universe.
Creeping slowly through the steamy heat already rising from
the trail just an hour after sunrise, the chaparral surprisingly showed no
signs of wilting in this third week of near 100 degree days. Giant orchids
exploded from scratchy sages tangled with poison oak. Luscious clouds heading north scratched
their bellies on ridge tops. A chubby pine tree nearly toppled by
its own enthusiasm, grew protected on all sides by the charred remains of its
ancestors felled by the Cedar fire.
Elsewhere, cedars, spruce and manzanita rose from charcoal
stubs.
Atop Cuyamaca, one of the most photographed trees in the
county caught the morning light as it crested the peak and spilled over the
western slope.
Feeling comfortable enough on my first hike since damaging
my knees, I added a 3-mile splinter trail, winding back south on Fern Flat Trail
towards West Mesa, giving me a better view of the palette of greens returning
to cover scorched earth. Even a bare tree wore ornamental green-and-grey
finches.
In the rich red clay trail dust, one who didn’t make it lay
five feet from a freshly shed hawk feather.
Were it not for two devastating wildfires in the last decade sweeping across the region, these orchids, pine sprouts, spruce, even finches, might be giants by now.
The day after my hike a new fire began consuming this very
same landscape. Three days later, it is nowhere near containment. I think of
the firefighters who died in Arizona last month battling a wildfire that leaped
unpredictably back on itself. When the smoke clears finally here in the
Lagunas, I know I’ll go back to look for that cherubic pine. And hope the fragile seeds of wisps and lupine are safely burrowed under dust.
