They Might Be Giants

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.