Burn it Down

Back in 2014 I received mandatory evacuation orders as the King Fire raged a few miles from my home. I stood at the top of the stairs shaking, wondering, what do I bring? What’s important?

At that moment I realized – like fully realized – that all the shit I amassed is just stuff. It doesn’t matter. I gathered my pets, laptop, banjo, a bag of clothes, and some photos. Walked away from the rest.

Thankfully it was spared.

I returned home 9 days later to a fridge full of rotten produce and spiders run amok. Brazenly spinning webs at face height in the hallway and other inconvenient places.

That experience solidified my belief that stuff doesn’t matter, but it’s taken me even longer to see another negative aspect of it.

---

Part of the area where Chad and I have been walking while up here at his grandfather’s cabin was ravaged by a fire in the fall of 2018.

It’s hard to picture that now; with this unrelenting rain there’s water everywhere.

It’s running in rivulets down the side of the red earth. Turning timid creeks into wild river-rescue situations. It pounds the bike path we frequent, separating cartilage from hair as it breaks up the wild animal poops Elvis delights in sniffing.

Blackened sticks are all that remains of the trees that once shrouded the area, jutting sharp and skeletal against the moody grey sky.

“Before the fire, you couldn’t even see the water,” says Chad, gesturing to the brown river churning below.

“Well, burn it all down. That’s one way to get a view,” I muse.

And it’s kinda true.

If you look back at the changes Chad and I have undergone over the last two years, we’ve totally destroyed the life we had.

And the views we have now are incredible. There are the literal views of landscapes and sunsets and wild, and there are the internal views as insight into who we are, underneath all the junk and distraction.

Too much stuff clouds your vision. It becomes almost impossible to move or grow when you’ve got a shit ton of it weighing you down, keeping you stuck.

The more we release, the less of it is there blocking our vision and hindering possibilities.

We’ve got an exciting new adventure up ahead (I’ll share the details in future posts) and I can’t wait to hitch up and get back on the road.