Triggers

Editor’s note: my computer is being an absolute butt right now, so I was not able to pull together the high-quality Cracks you love and fear. The only thing I have is the intro, which turned out to be way longer than normal, because I wrote it on my phone so space means nothing. Just imagine yourself at an open mic, and I’m that lady who stands up and says she’s going to do some spoken word, and 40 minutes in you desperately try and think of an excuse to go get something out of your car. ENJOY!

Watching media coverage of the fires on the west coast triggers memories that are all too familiar if you grew up in the west.

Much of my childhood was spent on the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in a weird in-between climate that was yucca and plains and pine trees. And each summer, forest fires were a familiar part of the seasons. My first forest fire I remember was when I was ten or 11. Colorado was in the beginning of what would become years of drought. I remember on the news they talked about how the size and ferocity of those fires was just not normal. You’d wake up and the sun was hidden behind smoke, and the color was like a cloudy day without rain. My little sister had asthma and I remember my mom making us stay inside so it wouldn’t trigger her coughing, so hard my sister sometimes threw up from it. 

Forest fires are a normal part of healthy forest ecosystem. It helps get rid of old and dying growth and the cleared earth provides space for new saplings. But the kind of forest fires I grew up with were not like that. These forest fires usually start by accident. A fire at a camp. A party. One was started by a woman burning old love letters in her backyard. I wonder if she saw those acres and acres of scorched land, and if it felt like a broken heart.  

Fire is fun to play with. People joke about being “pyros” but I think everybody likes playing with fire at least a little bit. But the pain of a burn is one of my least favorite feelings. Anyone who’s accidentally set something on fire in the kitchen knows the absolute adrenaline that fills you as you try to quash it.

The pictures of fires this week remind me especially of 2012 in Colorado. Not soon after I graduated I went back to work in Colorado for the summer. I went to run some errands one day with my mom and as we drove up in the direction of the mountains we saw a huge plume of smoke on the mountain directly in front of us. We stopped and took pictures. You could see the flames. I’d never been so close to such a big fire. It grew. And over the next few weeks it came closer and closer to the city, and friends and their families near the hills had to start evacuating. It was unlikely it would come to our house, but I still made a pile in my childhood room with my passport and a few family photos. 

One of my best friends was working that summer in Mexico City. He checked in often to see I was okay and to ask about the fires. His parents asked him which of his things he wanted them to grab if they had to evacuate. I remember he mentioned a childhood beanie baby. A dragon. I had had the same one, in white. We laughed about being the same weird kids. 

The fire kept growing. It was carried closer to the town when a flaming deer jumped a highway, bringing destruction behind it.

I went out with a friend to go watch the fire one night as it came down the mountain. It was miles away but you could see the fire clearly, peacocking flames in the sky. It was terrifying and exciting. 

A few weeks later my friend in Mexico City died. It was tragic and abrupt. My grief that summer felt like a sharp knife I carried in my belly. Inside and out was hazy, smoky. I felt a little like that deer. Like I’d like to carry my pain and destroy everything around me, desperate to let people know just how fucking sad I was.

I found some solace in TV, in alphabetizing the albums at the record store I worked at, my bike ride each morning down long open avenues. The fire moved away, but the mountains on the front range were left bald and burned. I was sad, but time went on. The grief inside of me has become more dulled, but is still twisted around my guts. 

I guess I just mean to say that fire is a trigger, a visceral reminder of the things I cannot control.