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2. The Vision Fire
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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16 The Vision Fire When I first witnessed the effects of the Vision Fire in 1996, I was not aware that I was beginning to lose my eyesight. While I never again would see Point Reyes as clearly as I had in the months right after a wildfire altered the landscape, I would keep my sense of delight in that earlier experience, which has become a lasting inner vision for me. Last year, Point Reyes burned. The 90,000 acre national seashore that juts out into the Pacific like a bent elbow north of San Francisco burned in a huge fire that lasted for sixteen days. The fire started near the summit of a hill near Tomales Bay and burned all the way to the sea, sending up massive dark clouds of smoke, raging over hillsides through dense green brush and trees, incinerating everything in its path. It devoured a central area of the park measuring five miles long by as wide. It was a cloud-shaped burn that narrowed toward the ridges from which the fire came. When it was through, the broad hills facing the ocean were covered with gray cinder and ash, with white ash on top that looked like snow. Scorched, two 17 The Vision Fire blackened tree trunks stood occasionally in bare spaces, their branches broken off, reminders of all the rest that had burned. I had been planning to go to Point Reyes the very week the fire started. I wanted to go to the beach with my lover to celebrate our anniversary. It was a time of crisp, cool autumn days. I wanted to see the birds start to migrate. Then I heard that Point Reyes was on fire and we did not go. A month later, we went to a section of the park that had escaped the fire. On the way, we stopped for groceries in a small town near where the fire began and I smelled the burn in the air. It was a damp, dark, ashy, musky smell. We continued on, since I did not want to go into the burned area, to be disturbed by seeing the destruction. After that, I stayed away from Point Reyes for six months. I heard reports about the fire—that the four boys who had started it had turned themselves in, that some areas of the park were closed, that two weeks after the fire was over, new green growth was poking up through the gray ash, nourished by the winter rains. I finally went again to Point Reyes in the beginning of May. At that time, my lover and I decided to drive the fire route to the sea. We turned off onto a road leading through the center of the fire area, which had been closed down for months because the fire had crossed it, jumped a few houses, and marched on. As it marched, I was told, the animals took flight, some of them swimming when they reached the inlets and ponds near the ocean. They say the deer swam and the small foxes, too. As we drove, at first things looked as they had before the fire. On both sides of the road was thick, gray-green brush and tall trees. Then occasional singed trees and branches started to appear. The road carved a tunnel through the dense brush and wound upward. As we neared the top of a hill, it suddenly felt open and bright. Thin blades of fresh grass were shooting up in the dappled sunlight all around us. Amidst the grass, charred, blackened poles that had once been trees were climbing the hillside. They stood as if marching up the hill, guarding the fire area, welcoming us in. The stark beauty of those dark trees set against the new, green grass surprised me. I had expected grayness and depressing feelings. [34.201.16.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:18 GMT) Instead, I was seeing sparkling, delicate, fresh, white-green growth and the silhouetted black trees. As we drove further, the view opened out to an expanse of brightgreen hillsides sprawling for miles, dotted here and there with groups of burnt tree trunks; the blue ocean was in the distance, the road winding toward it. The road soon became lined with tall, yellow wildflowers tossing about in the wind and sun. Several times, I saw nearby a charred, black tree that seemed still intact, its curved branches held high in a...