Rejuvenating Fire

Some of our accumulated debris doesn't burn away

I was doing a controlled burn in a carnivorous plant garden when Momma got lost yesterday. Frustrating and scary, I know. She called from a road she didn’t recognize wanting help to get to a lunch date with her girlfriend. Two of us got in the truck, with her on the phone, and we set course to find her. 45 minutes away. We tried talking her through it. No go. We tried looking at our map and giving her directions. No go. 

The roads have changed after all. She has changed too. I tried not to say, “I asked you to wear the watch I got you – it has locating chip.” No go.  I said it. “I’ll call you back,” I said. I drove. I cried. I wiped tears and dribbled and the smell of pine straw smoke across my face. My coworking, in the passenger seat says, “You’ve got ashes smeared across your face.”

We found her. She followed behind the smudged truck. We didn’t really talk all night. We quietly followed the routines of a late afternoon garden walk, supper, and ‘Wheel of Fortune.”  

When you do a rejuvenation burn, it gets out all the accumulated debris. Turns it into a quick shot of nutrients in fact. The plants, hunkered down in wet peaty soil, now exposed to fresh air and springtime must feel like they’ve just had a brisk rubdown and a brand-new start. I know how to make them feel like that.  

If only I knew how to do that for her. For me. For us.