Burnt Trees

There were many forest fires this summer.  One devastating forest fire burned to the edge of the highway we travel to go to our favorite vacation spot.  I knew the fire had been there so I was hunting for the signs it left behind as we drove.

The first thing I noticed when I found the charred and dead trees were the fully green and alive trees standing next to them.  One tree would be covered with dead, orange pine needles and the tree next to it would be completely green with only a little charred bark on its trunk.  This happened repeatedly.  It was difficult to see the fire's path because there were so many live trees mixed in with the damaged and dead ones.  I wondered, why do some trees stand strong while others are damaged beyond repair? What made that tree come out of the fire standing tall with its green needles while the one 10 feet away died and now stands only because its roots are still in the ground?

Was it resilience?  Was one tree more prepared for hardship than another? Did one tree have more strength or nutrients inside than the other?

Was it luck?  Did the path of the fire simply go around those healthy trees?  Did it burn smaller when it came near them?

Was it outside help?  Were the fire fighters able to intervene in some cases and save one tree, but not another?  Did the plane or the helicopter happen to drop the fire retardant in just the right place so that one tree lived and another didn't?

Or was it location?  Did some trees happen to be in a more direct path while others were on the outskirts?  Were some areas more densely populated with underbrush and the trees couldn't do anything else but burn because of the fire that burned around them?

Perhaps it was a little of everything.

We are often those trees.  We are battling fires all of the time.  All the same factors that affect those trees affect us.  The difference is that we have feet and we can have determination. A tree cannot.

We have a choice.  Perhaps everything is against us.  We are not resilient, we have bad luck, there is no one to help us, we are always in the wrong place at the wrong time.  If all of this is true we still have the ability to have determination.  We can choose to stand.  We can choose to walk to a safe place.  We can choose to survive and thrive.  We don't have to stand and take it like the trees and hope that we will make it through, we can choose that we will make it and we won't fall.

My favorite part about observing those trees on our trip was that right now the dead trees are camouflaged by the fall colors.  I was looking for them so I found them, but if you were simply driving along the road you wouldn't be able to pick out the dead trees because their orange needles help them blend in with all the other trees that are turning for the season.

Whether the trees were dead or alive, it was beautiful. We don't have to be perfect or all put together to be beautiful.