I was driving through the B.C. interior on the way back to Vancouver Island at the end of my book tour, hauling a Uhaul trailer full of my belongings to my new home. I’d chosen the longer and slower route because it’s the prettier one. I’m a sucker for pretty – just ask my kids how often they’ve had to suffer through the extra hours of “mom’s scenic route” on our trips.
Suddenly the already beautiful scenery became haunting and... in a surreal way... somehow extra beautiful. I was passing through a region where raging fires had destroyed massive tracts of forests a few years ago (the year I was moving my daughter to B.C.). The former forest was now an eery graveyard of blackened tree trunks, set against a brilliant blue sky.
What stopped me in my tracks, though, were the flowers. The forest floor was covered in bright yellow flowers, all turning their faces toward the sun.
I pulled over to the side of the road and walked down the hill into the burned-out forest. I couldn’t resist the tug of those audacious flowers daring to make this graveyard beautiful. It was a holy moment, walking among their bright, upturned faces.
Sometimes we reach a point in our lives when we have to burn everything down and plant flowers. Or sometimes we simply have to wait for the flowers to bloom after our lives have burned to the ground through forces outside our control. Either way, flowers have a way of taking up space and turning toward the sun when the trees above them no longer block the light.
I was in the middle of my own flowering moment when I stood there among those yellow blossoms. A couple of years ago, I “burned down my life” by selling my house, getting rid of most of my belongings, and setting off into the world with a suitcase and laptop. Now I’ve settled down in a new place, on an island, 2400 kilometres from where I once lived, and the flowers are starting to bloom in this quieter, pared-down life.
There have been several of those moments in the last dozen years – moments when my life was either disrupted by circumstances outside of my control (i.e. my mom dying), or I chose to burn it all down (i.e. quitting my job, getting a divorce, leaving a church). In every single case, after a time of grief, when the burned-out forest felt parched and void of life, the flowers eventually returned.
Soon, those flowers won’t be the only things growing on that forest floor. New trees will begin to root there, starting with those that require the heat of the fire to release their seeds, and those that need full sun in order to grow. The soil will be rejuvenated by nutrients from the trees that died, aided by mycelium, and new life will flourish, fed by the sun and rain.
Indigenous people all over Turtle Island have long understood the value of fire. “Fire is medicine,” says Yurok cultural fire practitioner, Rick O’Rourke. “For more than 13,000 years, the Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, Miwok, Chumash and hundreds of other tribes across California and the world used small intentional burns to renew local food, medicinal and cultural resources, create habitat for animals, and reduce the risk of larger, more dangerous wild fires.”
Sadly, in their bid to control and exploit the land, colonizers failed to value Indigenous knowledge when they began to suppress fires in North America. The result has been disastrous (including for those who lost their homes in the region I was driving through). When fire is suppressed for too long, it limits biodiversity and results in out-of-control forest fires that destroy far larger regions, including entire towns.
Our lives are like that too – when we fail to welcome and harness the medicinal fires that clean out the deadfall and create possibility for regrowth, when we suppress those impulses that tell us it’s time for change, then we limit the possibilities in our lives and the eventual destruction can be far more dramatic and painful.
Perhaps it’s time for your own medicinal fire? Maybe it’s time for some disruptive choice that will clear out the deadfall and leave room for new growth to come.
And maybe it’s time to plant flowers in the graveyard.
Next week, I’ll be launching a brand new coaching circle called Time to do the Brave Thing. I’ll be inviting a limited circle (only six people) to join me for weekly conversations about what new possibilities might be growing in their lives. Stay tuned for more details.
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What a lovely reflection. Thank you!