Today, while driving back to my second home, I had to drive through Bastrop, where all the terrible fires were about a month ago. I definitely didn't drive through the worst part of it, but just seeing all the blackened trees and crusty grass was really depressing. The water tower smiled mockingly in the background. Over 34,000 acres burned. 1,600 houses were destroyed. Two people lost their lives. Hundreds of firefighters worked relentlessly to control the fire as the wind kindled it, helping it to engulf the area and land its place as being the most destructive fire in Texas history.
Sucks, right?
But as I drove through this small, blackened area at seventy (okay, seventy four) miles an hour, I saw something: a patch of bright yellow flowers. I smiled. Yes, the flowers were probably a species of those obnoxious weeds that you can never seem to get rid of in your garden, but seeing them on the side of the road, amidst the pallets of seeding grass the city had put down to help the flora start growing again, was inspiring. So maybe the water tower wasn't smiling mockingly after all. Maybe it was beaming upon new life, watching over the area that will someday grow to be beautiful again.
"In nature the life-death-rebirth cycle is clear as we watch flash fires ignited by lightning level the prairies. It may appear that all life is gone, lost to the ravages of flame and smoke, but within days, tiny green shoots begin to poke above the surface of the soil. Mother Earth has cleared the land for new life."
Kathleen A. Brehoney
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