No One Will Save Us but Ourselves
"There is no escape, for we are already home--we are atop a mountain on fire-- to assert otherwise is our Samsara." Poetry by Geoff Johnson
"In early August 1961, more than 26,000 acres (10,500 ha) of upper montane and subalpine forest on the Bitterroot National Forest burned in a lightning-caused wildfire. At the time, the Sleeping Child Burn represented the single largest forest fire in the Northern Rocky Mountains in more than 20 years. Historically, large wildfires have not been uncommon in this region: but after two decades of successful forest fire suppression, the Sleeping Child was treated as an event almost without precedent. Not only was reseeding and rehabilitation an immediate concern, a substantial effort was invested in attempting to return the burned area to timber production. The burned area also provided an unusual opportunity to evalutate and describe vegetation recovery following a large and intense forest fire."
--US Department of Agriculture-Forest Service, "The Sleeping Child Burn
—21 Years of Positive Change"
In August 1961, my fire-fighter father sat atop a mountain on fire left along with two native Americans
where the helicopters couldn't land
in an area called Sleeping Child.
He had no choice but abide the night.
Almost year later I was born.
Today my son tells me of the LA carnage, not thinking of the San Diego days of wildfire haze, shutting us in for near a week each time.
He tells me the worst us yet to come, anxious to escape to the Olympic Penninusula where a heat wave passed through killing hundreds in British Columbia.
My wife speaks of Taiwan, forgetting the drought that dried up Sun-Moon Lake, followed later by a crippling cold that killed the elderly.
Monkeys fall from trees where the Mayans stood, and wet bulb events threaten the Global South.
There is no escape, for we are already home--we are atop a mountain on fire--
to assert otherwise is our Samsara.
Our folly is to think we cannot change, or that we ever have a choice.
There is only impermanence and change which carries us, which we either must abide or . . .
Geoff Johnson is a college instructor, unionist, and activist in San Diego.