STRUCK EXCERPT:
On Corral Hill Lookout at 6,000 feet, we watch for smoke, which might not be visible if a lightning strike catches fuel beneath the ground—a bigger fire waiting to happen once ignited by oxygen-rich air. Our boss, Arizona, says the roots can burn for a long time. Sometimes, in the forest, ground collapses into the space where a root once took up room—and a hole is left beneath the forest floor.
Above or below the surface, fire calls to me. I have stared into beach fires, campfires, and at the blazing logs in the resort lobby stone fireplace. I’ve stared at Presto logs burning in my family’s fireplace, pine sticks burning in the kitchen trash burner and in the converted oil stove in the living room of the Old Mare house where I lost the baby.
Starting fires is one of my gifts. Once I caught my hair on fire when I leaned too close to a candle while looking through a microscope. And the bottom of a frypan, once super heated, went poof—blue flames leapt up the sides and just as quickly died out. When I was in high school, I put a plastic platter in the oven to keep the meat warm. The oven accidently got turned to broil and shortly that plate was popping and melting and making a horrible stink, filling the kitchen with toxic smoke. Dad grabbed the platter with a potholder, ran it outside, flinging it into the backyard. We went out for hamburgers that night.
When Jack and I were first together I caught my apartment on fire. We’d made several mushroom-shaped candles on the beach at Priest Lake. Though I’d blown out the one I was burning, the string-wick reignited, starting my kitchen table on fire, the curtains, and then the entire kitchen wall went up in flames.
We weren’t gone long, just downstairs visiting our friend, Michael. I’d blown out the candle before we left. Time passed, and I began to smell smoke. When I got to the top of the stairs, smoke was pouring out from beneath my apartment door. Jack ran in and my cat ran out. While he tried to douse the blazing kitchen table with water tossed from glasses I’d left setting in the sink, the fireman passed me on the stairs. I was bawling my eyes out and hugging Jude, who wasn’t harmed, thank goodness. Inside, they hosed down the wall and tossed the burning table out the second story window in a volley of sparks. All that remained was a charred stink and blackened walls. We sanded and painted, but in the end, I had to move into another apartment.
Now we stand on the catwalk watching heat rise off the forest. The eerie high-pitched cry of a red-tailed hawk sends a shiver down my spine. There’s something a little frightening about heat. It just keeps going and going, melting pavement, scorching skin, damaging paint jobs, and crisping the forest….
Nancy Canyon, MFA, creates in a studio overlooking Bellingham Bay. Her paintings, poetry, and prose are widely published: Adventures NW, Sue C. Boynton, True Stories II-IV, Raven Chronicles, Floating Bridge Review, Cirque, & For the Love of Orcas Anthology, to name a few. Nancy coaches for The Narrative Project and teaches writing for Chuckanut Writers. Her memoir manuscript “Struck: A Memoir,” details Nancy’s work as a lookout attendant in the Clearwater National Forest in the 70s. Celia’s Heaven (novel) & Saltwater (poetry) are available at Village Books.
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