Ignite

I woke up and the world was on fire.

Orange light and incomprehensible sound roared in my ears on the other side of the tent fabric. My camping partners were already up and yelling, shadows flitting across my vision  in a frenzy of movement. The  tent flap zipped open and Patrick’s head appeared, framed by a world unbeknownst to me - trees ablaze and sparks flying, smoke and heat like a wall of death blasted me in the face.

He grabbed my sleeping bag and tried to get me unzipped, frantically screaming something that I couldn’t hear. I snapped out of my stupor and fumbled with the zipper myself, fingers no longer computing what my brain was screaming: to get out, move.

Finally freeing myself I flung my body out the door, on Patrick’s heels, and stopped in my tracks.

The forest was a world of horrors; smoke furled up towards an unseen sky, flames licked up the pines and caught on every stick, every leaf, turning them to ash in an instant. My friends were sprinting around the site, screaming at each other, trying to decide which way to go, for there was no clear path. It seemed we were stuck in an endless world of raging heat and flame.

Joe was screaming and pointing, Andy doing the same but in the opposite direction. I stared around helplessly as the world I knew disappeared into ash and fire. Patrick ran over to me and took my face in his hands, shaking me slightly - his eyes were animalistic, soot smudged his face, he smelled of burnt hair and sweat and something else - fear.

I found his eyes and came alive once again. He pointed to a small sliver of hope - an opening in the brush. We ran over and grabbed the shirts of our friends, throwing them in the direction of freedom. Realizing, they began to run. We followed.

The heat was suffocating - sweat slid down my face, my back, pooled in my palms, ran into my eyes. My shirt stuck to my skin and my hair plastered to my face. Smoke poured down my throat and seared my insides but I kept running, kept following my friends through a nightmarish land of heat. We turned this way and that, following whichever way showed less signs of devastation and burning. Trees and branches fell around me - crashing to the earth in bone rattling defeat that shook the ground beneath my feet. Tears mingled with sweat, and the salt combined on my tongue and cracked lips to whisper strength that I could not find anywhere else.

Around the bend, straight, back track, are we going in circles? It was so hot, and I could not breathe. I stopped for a moment and bent over, placing my hands on my knees. Slick with sweat yet black with soot they belonged to someone else. Someone grabbed my collar and hauled me onward just as a flaming bough crashed to the earth again behind me. I barely registered catching fire.

It was Patrick who grabbed me and put out my pant leg - I did not have the courage to look at the charred flesh, but I could smell it as it mingled with the burning bark of the trees.

I do not know how long we ran for, but I was about to give up when we came upon a lake and plunged into the eerily still waters. The glass surface rippled as we stumbled and gasped to chest height in the frigid water. When we deemed we were safe enough, we stared around.

The entire forest seemed to be alight. There was no sky, just smoke and debris flung into the air, flames licking and reaching upwards, outwards, devouring, hungry, everlasting. The horrors around us reflected in the once again still surface as we stood in silence - we were in an alternate world, still in the nightmare, but just removed. We did not speak. We just stood, lone figures with no place left to go, nothing left to say, as we watched the world burn.

At some point Patrick came over and put his arm around me, and that was when I realized I was silently crying once again. I realized then too that my calf was screaming even though submerged. This was not a prescribed burn, this was the result of a single spark, from a campfire that was not doused. A single spark, and my forest, the complex life around me, burned. 

One spark that ignited a pain  in my heart for a world that would never be the same. How easy, to say, “good enough”, when leaving your campsite. How easy to say, “how sad” when the forest burns. But this was not easy. I felt more connected to this forest, my forest, more than ever before. I watched it burn before me while I stood, safe in the icy waters, and felt the pieces of me burning, too.

My heart, catching fire, and turning to ash along with the trees who would not whisper sweet nothings into the air on a summer breeze, to the plants and bugs and animals that would cease to chatter. Perhaps I would cease to chatter next.

I woke with a start, gasping for breath. My lungs did not meet smoke, my calf was not injured. A dream, just a dream. My forest was alive and well, and we were not burning. I touched my face and felt the smooth skin, stared at clean hands that had not been smeared with soot. I stretched my feet to feel my leg muscles work in tandem.

We were not burning.

But something was wrong, what started as a soft rumble in the distance was becoming louder, much too loud, much too fast. Like a growling beast, awake after a long slumber, prowling through a once silent wood. What was the sound?

I unzipped my tent and stepped onto the pine needles. I stood tall and turned - to face the wall of flames heading for camp.