Fire
A sustained collection of flames strangely flew up from the familiar scenery in front of me, ranging throughout this park landscape visitors so often sought in late spring or the start of summer for its usually green scenery and sense of serenity. The blaze, rising higher than I had expected, easily reached to the serrated line of upper limbs in nearby trees still mostly lacking leaves, many branches yet totally skeletal in early April. Narrow tips of treetops spiked the blue sky and quickly ignited like slim candle wicks when fueled by contact with a lit match. Though walking forty or more yards away, I already felt the fire’s severity. This morning its magnitude was displayed by the concentration of those evident hues frequently associated with high temperatures on the color wheel spectrum: the fierce red of flaring ore in a factory’s blast furnace, the burning orange of a setting midsummer sun, and that glowing gold on the surface of a molten lava flow. The clear air I’d observed upon awakening to the first shafts of light at dawn had filled with a heavy gray haze lazily drifting from those scattered masses of ash now almost the color of grimy marsh mud baked under a summer sun. Clouds of smoke floated slowly overhead toward the north, eventually to be directed by stiffer breezes beyond the nearby Lake Michigan shoreline and to shift across the fairly tranquil waters before dissipating in the distance.
***
Following a lesson learned early from my father’s example, I have held a certain amount of reverence—perhaps even fear—and clear fascination with the element of fire since an incident when I was a nine-year-old boy waiting impatiently for him to return from work. Arriving home after a long day and stepping through the front door of our Flatbush apartment a few hours later than usual, my father seemed oddly fidgety, energized and almost nervously distracted upon being greeted by my mother and me, so much so that even a child could detect anxiety in the edginess of his voice. Though pleased to see him, my mother was also unusually tense and somewhat silent. Clearly, neither one of them wanted to engage in much discussion. In fact, both appeared apprehensive. To counter a lingering chill brought indoors from the cold weather, my mother simply offered my father a bowl of reheated leftover stew still simmering on the gas stove in the kitchen. Her subdued tone suggested a sense of inner stress as well.
***
A rarity for early April, the local meteorologists’ forecast for warming weather and calm winds appeared nearly perfect for the prescribed fire where I’d been invited to join professional work crew members. Since I have participated as a volunteer photographer for various projects at the state park in recent years, a couple of the officials invited me to accompany individuals from the Indiana Dunes State Park and Indiana Dunes National Park as they collaborated in the controlled burn of acreage along trails through a large area of landscape overlapping both park entities. Consequently, I appreciate those state park liaisons who requested I photograph the activities—the interpretive naturalist, Marie, and the property manager, David. While my task merely consisted of collecting interesting images for sharing on the web at the park’s Internet pages, I learned a great deal about the day’s prescribed burn procedures as several service personnel repeatedly took time to engage in conversation and patiently detailed to me the purpose or practice of certain maneuvers. Indeed, I especially thank Neal and Nate, veteran firefighters from the national park, for taking time to diligently provide such interesting and instructional information. Additionally, I admired the care and skill numerous persons exhibited throughout the process in undertaking the dangerous efforts of setting and maintaining an intentional blaze so expansive in its coverage of the land.
***
As he removed his coat, yet wet from a continuing drizzle, I questioned my father, who only commented he’d been delayed by an accident that had temporarily shut down the subway station where he worked and prevented trains from running. Leaving the living room at their urging, but eavesdropping at my bedroom door, I could catch fragmented parts of my parents’ subsequent conversation. At times, despite their hushed voices in the kitchen, I discerned details concerning an airplane crash, jet fuel fires, burning buildings, automobiles ablaze, bodies discovered, and a desperate search for survivors. Apparently, according to one snippet of information I gathered, my father had been among the first people on the scene at the time of the tragedy, and he’d witnessed an entire city street devastated by flames. Along with others in the area, he had remained for hours, initially to assist emergency crews who’d been overwhelmed by the scope of the situation and then to ascertain if any plane passengers had been found alive.
***
When I arrived at the staging area, a parking lot adjacent to the state park’s entrance gate, the place appeared to be filled with all sorts of emergency vehicles—fire trucks, water pumps, medical vans, military-style jeeps, three-wheel ATVs, police cruisers, pickup trucks—all prepared for the day’s highly organized event. Numerous neat piles of the brigade’s gear also filled most of the remaining empty spaces beside the one to which I guided my car. After a week with intermittent rain, a slight breeze barely stirred the treetops, and that bright spring sun hanging in a high blue sky hadn’t yet dried the terrain too much. I was greeted by David, who described the upcoming afternoon’s planned program and produced a trail map with markings displaying the course of operations. The strategy involved an agenda with activities starting at the northern end of the targeted region and gradually proceeding south with further actions so that any smoke clouds stirred by the southern breeze would always be advancing away from the series of burns and over Lake Michigan. Then I was guided toward a path that would lead to an opening on a ridge overlooking a designated flash point for the beginning of the operation, and an ideal site for monitoring the process.
***
Though he didn’t smoke, in late evenings my father would often join other neighborhood men converging at a corner cigar shop and newsstand where they would anticipate the arrival of an early morning edition of the News or Mirror newspapers. Together, the gathering would stand outside in any kind of weather and pass time by briefly and congenially debating community civic issues. Other times they would discuss and lament the tribulations of the New York City sports teams, though in recent seasons many also remained loyal fans of the Dodgers or Giants, despite both clubs’ disloyal departure to California not long ago. Whenever I accompanied my father, his friends would always additionally ask about my participation in school sports. On Sundays, I’d frequently see some of the same men congregate in the church vestibule before services carrying metal collection plates with felt center pads or long-handled wicker baskets with a purple cloth lining for parishioner offerings at noon Mass, in which I participated as an altar boy.
***
The experienced personnel of the Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park expertly conducted the controlled burn along Trail Three in the Dunes Nature Prairie Preserve. A few of the firefighters are retired from their units but, as they explained to me, they return each year to assist with their veteran proficiency during these important maintenance operations. Controlled burns are ignited as a means of preservation by assuring long-term restoration of vegetation, and these acts are beneficial in reducing hazardous natural conditions across the landscape that could contribute to a threat of future unmanageable wildfires. The intent is to supply certain circumstances that reduce the accumulation of unattended kindling and foster the sustained health of the terrain. The day’s weather was perfect, since only a slight southern breeze continued blowing under mostly sunny skies with temperatures lifting into the mid-seventies, and drifting ash could be carefully limited to the immediate surrounding grounds. Excess plumes of soot rising higher in the sky were considered in the planning. Furthermore, any spread of smoke was designed to travel north over Lake Michigan, dispersing above the distant blue expanse I could see from my elevated position between those acres of prescribed fire and a beach backed by the broad sweep of lake water.
***
About nine o’clock each night, a couple of men from the group gathered at the corner store would eagerly help the shop owner, who was the father to one of my school friends, bring indoors the big bundles of tabloid papers plainly wrapped with dark tan packaging sheets. The parcels had been dropped curbside with a distinctive thud as they were tossed in the black night from the back of a slowly passing truck. In the years before legal lotteries, all those awaiting the newspapers participated in a gambling pool and were keen to read the race track stats, hoping to match the last few digits of the day’s total mutuel handle to the chosen trio of numbers each had bet regularly with a local bookie. Though I knew nobody expected to win in any given night, I noticed hope never seemed to fade away, and the same disappointed men would buoyantly return day after day. Occasionally, I’d accompany my father to watch the men’s nighttime ritual, always wanting to be on hand when our selection—the three digits of our house street address—proved to be the winning combination worthy of celebration.
***
Resting on a fallen tree trunk in a clearing at the nearby ridge David had recommended to me when I arrived, I witness the beginning of the process as a forward team, including some men hauling hoses from the water trucks and others appearing to wear portable pumps on their backs, prepares the northern border of the burn by dousing the ground where boundary lines about a couple yards wide will preclude any unwanted breakthrough of fire. From a distance, the weathered wood of the downed oak had looked like the overturned hull of an old rowboat—ruined wood worn smooth or weather rotten—isolated in that otherwise empty section of the meadow. Now, dampening down swaths of land as buffer zones meant to block encroachment of the fire into yet protected parts of the park not set for fire, including the location where I am waiting, the crewmembers exhibit a playfulness and seem eager to proceed to the more serious segment of their exercise. They joke with one another and laugh when a stray stream of water, spread by an isolated sudden wind gust, sprays one of the workers. A supervisor drives his jeep in a stop-and-go style along the long line of men and seems to be sharing words of encouragement as well as updates on precise scheduling for the next steps in their activities. Hearing his enthusiasm and positive excitement, I realize all I am about to view will conflict with every instinct I long possessed regarding fear for the element of fire, and I will soon embrace a contrary notion that its potent force can be beneficial, even used as a natural tool for protection or healing of the habitat.
***
On that December day my father had come home hours late from work, he did not permit me to accompany him on the customary evening trip to collect a newspaper, claiming conditions following the week’s snow accumulations were still too windy and cold for me. Instead, bundled in an old navy peacoat and wearing fleece-lined leather gloves, he left me behind when he took the two-block walk to the newsstand. Upon his return and just ahead of my bedtime, I could tell he’d again not found the winning combination of numbers in the racing stats, but he seemed even more dispirited as he hastily stowed the folded newspaper into a rugged duffel bag constructed of coarse blue cloth where he normally kept various necessities for work along with a shiny silver thermos. Its insulated flask was filled early every day with strong morning coffee, though brewed with egg shells to decrease its bitterness, and the black cap screwed into the top also served as a cup. Usually, since he’d depart in the dark preceding dawn before I woke, my father would leave the newspaper on the kitchen table, splayed open to the sports pages so I could read box scores and stories about favorite athletes during my breakfast or prior to heading for school. On this occasion, a Saturday—though the beginning of the weekend, still a workday for my father—the newspaper was missing when I awakened.
***
As I observe the firefighters, most in red helmets and yellow jackets, igniting a stubble of underbrush or small clusters of shrubbery with easy sweeps of gas can drip torches acting as extensions of their arms, the paths of combustion seem to creep toward my position. Small flames skate across a level stretch of open grass as if in pursuit of something unseen. Noticing the closeness and beginning to feel its heat warming the area, I remind myself again that controlled burns represent a crucial part of the process in protecting this property, safeguarding its essential character by eliminating those invasive species, purging plants now choking the sprouts of native growth. Intentionally set, prescribed fires will provide preservation as part of this counterintuitive policy. Today’s efforts will limit the risk of a damaging natural conflagration, and they represent a way to carefully manage the fate of this landscape. Much of a favorite trail is swiftly becoming engulfed with escalating flames, each seemingly reaching even higher into the sky than the one before it, and I can already smell the smoldering of undergrowth or charring of tree bark as those gray ash clouds drift my way in a slowly shifting breeze. The scent that at first had reminded me of an aroma from a camping fire pit eventually becomes overpowering, causing an occasional cough. However, I know the ultimate goal is worth this inconvenience as well as the unpleasantness of these images displaying apparent destruction my camera now captures. Before long, the scorched sections create a collection of sounds—large limbs groaning, loose sticks of deadwood crackling, thin reeds of marram grass sizzling, and the distinctive whoosh with each new blaze elevating above the heads of those firefighters still seemingly sauntering in a relaxed manner among the rampaging flames of that fiery landscape.
***
The day after my father came home late, on that Saturday shortly before noon, I spotted a morning newspaper lying on a dining room table at a friend’s house, where I had gone for lunch and to play. A stark headline, “AIR CRASH RAINS DEATH ON CITY,” loomed above a full-page grainy black-and-white photograph on the front of The Daily News that showed a quartet of people wearing winter coats huddled by a street curb in a lingering drizzle occasionally mixed with pelting sleet. One man in a dark fedora hat held an umbrella over a remaining snowbank—looking like a white sand dune stained, gradually turning to slush in the rain—that had been pushed there by a sanitation department plow earlier in the week. Upon the snowy mound yet a few feet high, the prone broken body of a boy showed, his smoke-smudged face peering up, exhibiting shock. The four bystanders—two men and two women—among those who had dampened the boy’s smoldering clothes with snowpack, gathered around him. All were looking away at the moment the cover photo was snapped, as if unable to make eye contact with the child or merely in a confused state. More likely, among the first people on the scene and needing aid, they were anxiously surveying their surroundings, awaiting medical personnel and an ambulance. Still, simply stunned, staggered by the trauma, they additionally seemed to be seeking a solution, or at least some sort of satisfactory explanation, from anyone for what had happened. Peering out, scanning the area through that damp air around them, staring blankly into rain diminishing to a persistent mist, they appeared to be hoping for an answer to an unspoken question on everyone’s mind.
***
The prairie meadow and a grassy hill suddenly appear to be sketched with irregular red, orange, and yellow designs, jagged files of fire flaring. The kindling glares as brightly as the shoveled mounds of charcoal that radiated heat in an ancient basement furnace my father fed daily each frigid Northeast winter morning in his supplementary role earning extra income as an apartment superintendent. Looking in the viewfinder at a scene seemingly drawn closer by the magnification of my zoom lens, writhing flames fill the camera frame, and each individual worker within range is again moving through the area independently, as if merely strolling alone and seeming almost nonchalant, all indifferent in their calm attitudes amid the fire’s intensity. Amazed at their apparently comfortable and casual behavior, I am also surprised that the men are maskless as they operate among the fiery fields of scrub brush with the thick smoke almost obliterating my view of them. In areas where the undergrowth is dense, the men remain longer yet stay collected in their composure when the flames begin to rise even higher. Another brief shift in the wind brings a cloud of ash drifting my way, blowing low over me, and briefly impeding my breathing. Indeed, occasionally overwhelmed by the windblown smoke, I turn back a bit, retreat momentarily to the temporary shelter of a small ravine about ten feet deep and hidden beyond a sand dune.
***
Identified as Stephen Baltz—at 11, only a couple years older than I—and described in the cover photo caption as “a small miracle,” the boy had been thrown from a United jet as it hit adjacent buildings. He seemed to be the sole survivor of a midair plane collision, which also involved a propeller-driven TWA flight that crash-landed miles away in an uninhabited area of Staten Island, taking a total of more than 130 lives, all those others aboard both planes and some victims on the ground in Brooklyn. During this holiday season, having been delayed by a flu sickness, the young Illinois native apparently had been traveling alone from Chicago to visit relatives for Christmas, seeking to join those close family members who had already arrived. According to the front page story of Saturday’s final morning edition of The Daily News, Baltz’s role as the lone survivor, conscious and transported to a nearby hospital for care, provided the stunned public with its only focus for hope. Media subsequently reported that “he recounted his view of New York City just before the crash to a doctor at Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital, where he was taken. ‘It looked like a picture out of a fairy book. It was a beautiful sight,’ he said, according to The New York Times.” However, little did I know then, as my friend and I glanced at the newspaper while we ate our sandwiches and drank chocolate milk, that Baltz had died only an hour earlier from extensive burns over various parts of his body and pneumonia brought by the inhalation of fuel fumes breathed deep into his lungs.
***
Although the men carrying their red gas cans seem to be traveling in random patterns as they roam through the underbrush, their supervisor standing next to me assures there is a set method to the lighting and the careful dispersal of the fire. He monitors events with a yellow walkie-talkie handset fit in the palm of his gloved hand, and I can hear the confidence, even extended enthusiasm, in the remote voices coming through the speaker. Periodically, I also listen as detailed weather conditions—wind direction and speed, temperature, humidity—are updated on the two-way radio as well. Nearby, one tall fireman slowly swings the gas can by his side with an extended reach, calmly moving his long arm with the easy elegance one might expect of a landscape painter making measured brushstrokes to mark nature’s features on a stretched canvas. Each touch of the torch’s fuel stream initiates a lengthening path of fire extending into the adjacent understory, that layer of vegetation and dead wood covering the ground between trees. Before long, a few more ragged rows of flames, now almost golden, claim the underbrush along Trail Three. Close enough to hear the continuing crackle of brittle branches and the hiss of clustered weeds quickly consumed by the spreading blaze, I am astounded by the unexpectedly rapid transformation of this scenery. Within minutes, spreading flames are raging as far as I can see, though condensed concentrations of smoke blot from view spots in this setting, concealing even the zoomed images depicted in my camera’s electronic screen by a telephoto lens.
***
Scores of firefighters, aided by over a thousand police or emergency workers from Park Slope and a number of surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods, plus reinforcements from other boroughs, had battled towering flames with streams of water from several hoses for a few hours before gaining total control, though pockets of the dying fire continued to glow as embers a while longer until fully extinguished. For much of the day, hundreds of civilians stood to the side in the damp cold, dazed by the bedlam all around them and disheartened at being incapable of offering further assistance. A long-time resident who’d been walking a pet poodle in front of her apartment about a block away stated she’d heard a rumble followed by a boom, and an elderly gentleman described to fellow bystanders the setting immediately after the crash as “an inferno.” One member of the neighborhood compared the devastation to sights he’d seen as a soldier in the Korean War. Another told of an acrid odor. A news source mentioned the crash as a terrible incident with “badly burned bodies” ejected from the airliner or belonging to persons on the ground who’d been killed instantly, including a 90-year-old church worker. Evidence of death lay scattered among the airliner’s cargo and other debris. Photographers for the local papers captured various images of victims’ bodies carried away on blanket-covered stretchers by grim-faced policemen in bluish-black uniforms and peaked caps or firemen in their distinctive slickers, brimmed helmets, and heavy boots as one bystander wiped her eyes or another apparently clasped his hands in prayer. Wreckage of a jet engine had flattened and set ablaze cars parked on the street. Some there that day said metal frames of vehicles seemed misshapen by the flames, an observation I would remember more than forty years later while watching on television another New York City disaster, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, where my brother worked but had fortuitously been out sick that morning.
***
By the time the work units have moved to another section of the countryside farther south to expand the burn, the grounds immediately in front of me have been charred, and only a few yellow embers continue to flicker faintly before fading out among the darkened parkland. A little farther away, a final unsteady multitude of tiny fires is dying out under the watch of a few crewmembers left behind to keep watch for any possible flare-up from these remnants. The burnt parcels have turned sooty after the flames’ initial passing, the setting suddenly appearing like a scene drawn in a charcoal sketch then inadvertently smeared. Pockets of shrubbery have blackened, as if they were just shadows lingering under the spring sunshine. Contrasting the former fullness in their tapered triangular shapes, some trees now seem disfigured and ominous. Looking at this vast tract of destruction, I find myself almost doubtful about its swift recovery from this purposeful act of purification. However, one of the firefighters advises me that because such intentional destruction disrupts the development of invasive vegetation, he’s sure of a healthy summer growth and beneficial long-range impact. Another worker walking past me, noting my dismay and concern for this fiery environment, smiles as he predicts nature’s course of healing: “In the middle of June, you’ll already be able to sit under a leafy tree and picnic on the green grass you’ll see here.”
***
A stench of burning fuel filled the air. Where there had been brick walls of tenements, now only columns of fire could be seen, their spreading heat surreal to traumatized bystanders gazing at them in this dismal wintry weather. Indeed, upon the plane’s impact, residents reported hearing a couple of explosions among structures struck by the plane that sounded like bombs detonating. Gathering the emptied thermos into his duffel bag and getting ready to head home after finishing his job at the 7th Avenue train station, only one block from the crash site, my father had heard the strong blasts, as well. Hurrying toward the noise, he’d been one of the first individuals to reach the scene, where an enormous intact tail section of the United flight rested more than a story in height amid days-old heaps of soiled snow under a street corner sign reading Sterling Place and 7th Avenue. Bodies were visible among the burning rubble and ruins of brick buildings. In the distance, a church steeple rose ghostlike from clouds of smoke.
***
When I return to the parking lot, my clothes have been saturated with a lingering smell of smoke—my shirt is flecked with small pale flakes, my jeans tinted with a thin film of powdery soot—and the staging area is almost totally empty now that most of the emergency vehicles have been repositioned. Hiking over a slope, I spot my SUV completely covered with a gray layer of ash, and I know a trip to the car wash will be part of my itinerary on the way home. Driving a winding lane, exiting past the park’s entrance gate and toward State Highway 12, I notice a few evergreen trees clustered atop a dune hill just above the shoulder on the western side of the road are still alive with fire, flames waving crazily from the higher branches of their frames, each stripped bare by another flare. The work crews have just moved through here, making their way farther south to a remote section of the prairie, where I cannot follow. About four more hours of today’s engagement with nature for the controlled burn remain in the original plan, but I go home.
***
My father had witnessed the horrible harm fire can cause, a perception I had shared over the decades since seeing that front page photograph, as well as the dramatic images of demolition within the newspaper displaying a city block of burning buildings—ironically including the Pilar of Fire Church and a funeral home. A row of four-story brownstones similar to our own—homes to hundreds of people and not far from Prospect Park, where I often spent summer afternoons—was also destroyed in the fire. Once, twenty-five years later while driving together with my father along a winding backroad in Florida, where my parents had retired, my mind was triggered by a column of smoke from a tire fire in an empty lot we passed, and I mentioned my childhood memory. When I asked about the experience of that tragic event and how it had affected him, my father responded maybe the way a combatant in war who had experienced battle and who had witnessed such tragedy would. He refused to revisit any details he’d seen by speaking about sorrowful scenes, even those I’d come upon in sources elsewhere, that might precipitate emotional torment. Reluctantly commenting only generally, although acknowledging the day’s remaining memories and images, he confessed he knew those terrible impressions would never go away. However, he noted he hadn’t spoken about the specifics since his quiet conversation at the kitchen table with my mother the day of the planes’ collision and descent from the sky, and he wished to keep it that way.
***
In the middle of June, two months to the day following the prescribed fire, I visit the site with Marie, the state park’s interpretive naturalist, for examination of evidence in the landscape’s recovery. A thick layer of overnight fog has lifted by midmorning. Helpfully and comprehensively, she explains the significance of eliminating invasive species. She specifically indicates places where revival of healthy native plants can be observed. The area already displays purification, progress toward rich renewal with the greenery of new undergrowth decorated by irregular sprays of colorful wildflowers, some lying amid the fresh scent of spring soil on a far-off slope like floral scarves tossed aside. Indeed, the underbrush seems much more lustrous now, and the radiant panorama before us often appears swept with striking splashes of brilliance, as if dashes of pigment were dabbed by the season’s brushstrokes. Trail Three weaves through the lush scene ahead of us as a weak stream of sunlight slips between the trees, not yet the kind of strong sunshine that bleaches the beach sand white in summer. Nearly noon, we see a developing canopy of leaves, wavering in what little wind there is, has begun to fill the limbs. Tracts of grass extend as sheets of deep green beneath those overhanging branches. In unison with the others, each slim blade gently bends in the slight stir of air. The previous day’s steady procession of roiling black clouds, periodically bringing brief bouts of heavy rain showers, had slowly floated away by midnight, faded over Lake Michigan, and retreated to the east. A shimmer of shallow lake water reaches beside the glistening of dunes seemingly assuming a peach hue under today’s late spring sun. In the distance, a pair of circling ring-billed gulls can still be seen above the shoreline, their white wings gracefully gliding high in the clear sky overhead.
***
Perhaps a characteristic frequently exhibited by men of his World War II generation, my father’s reticence to ever mention emotions or reveal intimate perspectives usually seemed to me a quiet strength rather than a vulnerability. In this way, I believe he felt others, especially loved ones, were safeguarded from also bearing a share of his personal burdens. Consequently, despite my desire to learn more from him about the specifics of his experience, I did not question his refusal to be more forthcoming. He apparently preferred to project hope and optimism, to expect the best outcome whenever possible. However, he obviously remembered the frustration for him and the other pedestrians initially on hand when they observed the magnitude of the horror unfolding before them. They were staggered by the massive extent of the damage, the size of the fire, and the loss of life. To this day, scars of the tragedy are evident among the restored structures, places exhibiting mismatched bricks or unaligned windows. Staring into the emptiness of the Florida dirt road extending and bending in front of him out our windshield, my father only spoke briefly in a hushed and barely audible voice, “We mainly felt helpless…useless.” Then, after a pause for contemplating, turning his gaze toward me, he merely said with a sigh: “There wasn’t much anyone could do. We’d quickly concluded the situation was hopeless after walking around, searching, watching, and waiting a while; so, I went home.” Respecting his reluctance to revisit this incident, I knew not to push him for further information, nor did we ever discuss it again.
***
The date of the fatal plane crash and catastrophic all-consuming fuel combustion triggering fire that happened during my childhood is now even easier to remember since my son’s birth occurred on that same date—December 16—thirty-one years onward. Born just a short period ahead of my father’s death, Alex knows nothing yet about that tragic event three decades earlier. Indeed, I have chosen the same reticence my father exhibited, and until now I have not told my son or anyone else this personal history. Nevertheless, despite my past perpetual trepidation concerning fire, returning to the site of the prescribed burn today, I now observe and contemplate another more positive perspective, a reparative facet of this natural element. Poet T.S Eliot, who was also an air-raid warden monitoring German bombing runs in England during World War II, wrote of a fierce fire—posing purgation or purification characteristics inherent in some of its forms. He presents physical flames and emotional burning, and its symbolic spiritual reconciliation with nature’s beauty—as well as one’s recognition of a possible revival brought by love, human and divine—in the remarkable closing of Four Quartets: “All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one.”
***
Painter David Hockney has repeatedly commented in interviews about the inspiration of the seasonal shift moving from winter through summer, and how in the renewed life of peak spring he would encounter enticing scenery of “extreme greens,” colors he believes challenging, difficult to accurately recreate in paintings or photographs. Similarly, I am always drawn to the deep green foliage of trees, shrubbery, and other undergrowth covering the ground in late spring or early summer—especially following a spell of showers or a short pattern of more powerful rainstorms. On this June afternoon, birds repeatedly sing sweet songs above as they slip easily from one branch to another. Their rhythmic lilt drifting in a leisurely onshore breeze, I pause to listen. Narrow splinters of slanting light slide through the upper limbs of trailside trees. With the increasing saturation of details seen in this season, especially following the moisture from yesterday’s late rain, the whole setting appears unrecognizable compared to only two months ago. The subdued scenery that had been marked by dark scars with stark stubble for weeks is suddenly vibrant—in some places even flushed with lively flowers swaying and displaying petals with vivid splatters of color—as though the terrain had been instantly refreshed through the quick flick of a switch. On this day of my return to Trail Three, I have become hopeful and optimistic, revitalized by the natural imagery in front of me and captured by my camera for an intuitive renewal I know will be preserved, felt whenever viewing the photograph.