It has been a summer of fast fires, burning off the growth of a century throughout the grasslands and fire forests between the mountain ranges of the North East Pacific Coast. While that has been consuming attention, a slower fire has been going on. This one is called drought.

It’s not drought. This is one of the Turtle Hills along Turtle Ridge in Vernon. Note how so many plants, which have flourished in a long series of fire-free, wet summers, were burnt away this summer by the sun alone. It is the same story of balance and renewal. It is this cycle of forces that have made this land, and are continuing to make it in new circumstances, right now. Destroying land like this to protect houses is necessary, but it is also very colonial. It is the wound originally opened in the earth at the time of British and American settlement and the separation of the land and her people. There is a song that could be sung here at the intersection of Earth and Sun.

It is stress like this — not the easy years — that create the patterns of energy that are the story here.