What fueled the wildfires?
Linda Stonestreet
The tragedies that beset our beloved communities bring us to the edge of what was previously unthinkable. Our hearts keen for those who’ve lost everything. Our minds grapple with how and why these simultaneously ignited holocaustic events could unfold on our places of home/ground/place so readily, so swiftly, so adeptly.
As unanimous firepower claimed our hillsides, our homes, our beloved friends, neighbors, colleagues and plant communities and wildlife, we stand shaken, broken and united in the face of our own fragility, our own impermanence. We were simply all altered in a night.
At what point does an evacuee become a refugee? Is it when the wind keeps driving and no containment of the fire at that moment is possible? Is it when there is no community left to bring services such as temporary housing, shelter, drinking water, sewer systems, medical services, food?
Is the possibility of returning to the land we come from that contains the animal, mineral, spiritual and human communities we value the primary difference?
All was well in our world, and then we made this radical shift in our way of life. The things, the people, the services we have such easy access to in normal times become our primary quest in times of disaster. Our comforts and conveniences, our well-being, have been shaken to their foundations.
I remember the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I was in Oakland, just off the Cypress Freeway when it fell. I had just exited that freeway with 15 East Bay Conservation Corps members aboard. Just that morning, I had received a gift of a 2-inch-screen television with an antenna. About 50 of us huddled around that TV, watching the pictures of the Bay Bridge falling. We became part of the mutual aid teams in the recovery for the weeks that followed.
I guess recovery is the key difference between evacuee and refugee. At some point, when no possibility exists anymore for recovery or restoration, the evacuee becomes a refugee. At that point, home becomes the horizon, the inner compass. The path below the feet. The need for refuge arises.
I’m sending billowing bubbles of Love out to all who are displaced by this tragedy in Northern California.
Evacuees and refugees, we see you, we feel you, and we engage our governments to do right by you.
We know you need refuge. We all need refuge. Blessed be.