Mountains for the Forest
I visited my old house on Marmot Road today. A somewhat irregular ritual. I never consciously plan to go. But often, I’ll set out for a walk and I notice my body drawn there. As though my very cells know that spot on earth so intimately and that part of me still exists on that land. I go back to reclaim that part perhaps. Or maybe it’s just to feel the closeness. Like visiting family.
It’s so different now. Fitting. I am so different now. About six months ago, a wildfire tore through the neighborhood and incinerated every house on that street save for my old home and my neighbor’s to the left. It’s still quite shocking to walk by and see what was once a very sweet and unassuming cul-de-sac with a few quiet families tucked into an orchard of ponderosa pine trees. Now it feels like a very lonely corner of the world. But not without its charm still telling a story.
I walked by 17520. The house I lived in for eight and a half years with my mother. The faded wooden front deck is still undisturbed. The top step where I spent many evenings desperately trying not to smoke cigarettes and failing. The same front step where I secretly filmed my mom sitting in her light brown folding chair, she thinking I was just taking a picture. The evening light was coming in so softly through the trees and creating an angel effect around her white hair. That was her first venture outside in two months after spending the summer inside on hospice and then having a miraculous turnaround. She sat in that same perch the next summer when my sister and I went out and planted a bunch of lavender and Russian sage in that barren front yard, an attempt to brighten up the view from our high-desert home. That was the same deck that I would return to years later, a couple of months after moving out and only a couple of weeks after her death, to lay on the top landing and lean against the front door, heart broken in pieces, attempting to feel the closeness of her body from the wood and figured glass.
The biggest ponderosa out front has been felled recently. The tree that used to hold the address sign. The one that the 0 kept falling from and my cousin Patrick fixed for me when he was visiting that one time.
I look to my neighbor’s plot to the other side. The log-house is completely gone, burned to ash. What remains perfectly intact is the driveway that S expanded in order to create a makeshift basketball court for his young son C, an aspiring NBA player, to practice 3-pointers. The basketball net is still standing with C’s full name painted on it in big bold white letters. An indestructible testament of a father’s love for his son.
Across the street, I see where K & A’s home used to be. A home, she told me once, they built in the 70s when Lake Shastina was first starting to become a residential neighborhood. That’s where they had their family, where she painted in her studio, where he sang his favorite Frank Sinatra tunes, and where they cared for their young disabled granddaughter. The sign they hung on the tree out front, the one that says “Still Camping”, magically remains untouched.
In the far corner is where E & S’s home used to be. I never knew them very well but spent a few moments several days a week with their dog Oliver who spent much of his time in their front yard. He was very sweet but very afraid of strangers. So each time I walked by I tried to assure him he was safe and that I only wanted to be his friend. Sometimes it worked and he would come up to the fence and wag his tail in delight. Most of the time it didn’t work and so I would give him a wide berth while he barked at me passing by. “I hear you, I hear you, Ollie” I’d say to him.
C’s home, the only other house besides mine that wasn’t burned and remains the only house completely intact. To my knowledge it didn’t receive too much extensive damage. I feel the kindness in that. C’s husband died suddenly a year prior to the fire, soon after they bought that home as a retirement gift to themselves. She’d felt enough pain for one year. This was grace perhaps.
I reflect on how much my life has changed dramatically since those years in that house. And how at the time it felt like I would be stuck there forever. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. And now, with most of those trees dead and gone, leaving only dirt and soil, there is no longer a forest to not see. But what you do have are the mountains revealed behind it. You never could before as they were hidden behind the tall majesty and density of the ponderosa. The soft curves of the Eddys with snow tops offering a felt sense of all is right-ness. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Can’t see the mountains for the forest. But now you can. Now I can.
