Yesterday I drove back to my small, third story apartment in Denver's heart after spending several days with those I love around my beautiful home state of Colorado. The weather here has been setting record highs with more sunshine than I knew what to do with but a compounding lack of summer rain that has left our mountains & plains like an eager tinderbox. Each time I seek an update on a current fire it seems I hear of a new fire that has just begun, it has been surreal & quite frankly, horrifying. With around one dozen active fires in the state we are in need of rain & hope more than ever.
The sun was beating down on my little white truck on my commute home to the extent that my eleven year old air conditioner could hardly keep the heat at bay. I cut through Boulder on my way to Denver to visit a friend & drove through several small, summer showers but each were missing their mark in our parched foothills. My rear view reflected the combined smoke of several westward fires as my drive took me east. During the drive I had received several phone calls from loved ones both indirectly & directly affected by the fire, the unknown striking fear in their hearts & my own.
What will be lost? Is everyone okay? How much will this fire grow? How can this even happen?
These questions were cause for speculation across the Colorado media & in my own mind as I maneuvered my truck into a narrow parking space. I grabbed my pack full of dirty clothes & a small handful of birthday cards from my passenger seat & went inside to to seek a bit of quite. The peace was short lived as I opened my living room blinds & my eyes took in the level of disaster across the front range. The small, summer showers that had been chasing me around Boulder had grown in size as they reached Denver, twisting & contorting the trees with their strong winds & blocking all but an orange speck of the sun with it's dark, foreboding clouds. Lightning was flashing through the sky in great numbers. I went to stream the local news stations on my computer for the most current information. With the news playing in the background I looked left from my window to see the smoke from Waldo Canyon; to the right was the 87,000 acre High Park fire. The reporters focused on the 65 mile per hour winds carrying the fire over the foothill barrier & rushing into the city of Colorado Springs. There the fire remains, creeping into the City of Colorado Springs, just blocks from my old home & leaving several loved ones away from theirs.
Thirty-two thousand Colorado Springs citizens have gathered their treasures & evacuated as quickly as possible. One close friend of mine made it home with a policeman warning she had five minutes to gather anything she could during the mandatory evacuation. But as so many stood with heartbreaking questions, starring into the flames that rushed toward the city feeling helpless, there was still hope abound. Even I, being indirectly affected by this tragedy, felt hope for the city & it's people from my secluded & distant apartment. While it is truly devastating to lose a home, I watched interview after interview of evacuees giving thanks for the safety of their loved ones & less attachment to the material things that can be replaced.
As this fire continues to grow & destroy our homes, let it's glow highlight our love for one another, our faith, our hope. Let it remind us that our truest & deepest treasures are those that no fire, disaster or death can touch or take away. The things of this world can be gone today & replaced tomorrow but not love, faith or hope; these cannot be taken away unless we choose to release them. As I see people open their homes to those that are without, churches opening their doors in the middle of the night for prayer & refuge & hear of families sharing tears of thanks for safety & love, I have hope. While I pray this fire ends, it seems the bigger it gets the more we treasure one another, love bigger & are more generous than ever.
I guess that is one of the brighter sides to such a tragedy, we are reminded what our true treasures are & have always been.
