Prairie Fire

I'm a bit torn this morning, as to the content of today's post. You see, I failed to take my camera with me (or - "carry my camera with me" as they say in Deep South) last night when we headed into North Hollywood for our regularly scheduled tasks. My dismay at this realization hit me full force when, completely out of context, a tree had toppled over in the parking lot of a Target store.

Quizzically, I peered at it ~ and then I realized: the Santa Ana winds had knocked it over! HA! So much for not living in Hurricane Alley. Trees were dispensible, no matter the locale.

Nothing prepared me, however, for the return trip home. Not the smoke that plumed into the sky at dusk,

not the interstate closures just. over. the. mountain. from me. No, it was the brilliant orange atop the mountains,

with the little freeway that runs between the two that I was driving on that stopped me short. Up until that sight, I was blissfully ignorant as to how close the fires were to us.

Lamenting my lack of photographs was short-lived, once I opened my email inbox, though! There, in the brilliant hot heat of my heart in love, were pictures of my oldest daughter, visiting Gram on the Nebraska prairie.

My mom had captured a moment, etching it in time and continuium ~ and straight into the recesses of the panging part of my heart that misses home, my husband, my children, and my crock pot. Oh. And the bread machine.

What do I do? What shall I share?

Suddenly, the two juxtaposed possibilities were melded into one big conglomeration of smoke, flames, and prairie grass.

The fires that almost leveled Chadron came to my mind ~ the perfect pivot point to cleverly connect two seemingly opposite ideas.

I've just one important thing to say, then: "Hey Bethany ~ don't play with matches."

"D

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*LA fire photos courtesy of the Los Angeles Times