USA: A raging fire, a garden hose, and me
Alone and afraid with my greatest fear roaring in my face, the big mistake, plus the new name reveal, voting on the new logo, and some cool thank-you gifts
My grandfather squinted up the hillside at the towering Ponderosa pines.
I saw a glint of unease flicker across his steely blue eyes, like the shimmer of a mirage on a lonely stretch of desert highway.
“The one thing you always gotta be extra careful about here is fire. I’ve always been worried about that. With them trees so thick . . . if this property ever catches fire . . .” His voice trailed off.
When we bought the Montana property from Grandpa in 2004, he passed along his fear to me. Throughout all the years we owned this place, in the back of my mind, I was nervous about the possibility of accidentally burning it all down. It’s so dry here. One errant bolt of lightning. One campfire left unextinguished. One bottle rocket. One careless cigarette butt.
It only takes a spark, right?
When we sold the property in 2023, having successfully avoided a fire for all 19 years of ownership, I was relieved to transfer the underlying stress onto someone else’s shoulders.
But we still reside on the property—out on the RV pad—while we complete our preparations to hit the road as nomads. Of course, the yard is no longer our responsibility, but sometimes, like a few weeks ago when I cleaned up the flower garden when no one was looking, we still help out—especially if we were the ones who made the mess.
This past weekend, to clear our consciences, we decided to tackle the remaining burn piles out behind the barn—visual blights on the otherwise beautiful acreage. One pile contained the dry remains of a big pine tree we took down four years ago. The other one was a massive mound of wood scrap, leftover building materials, and assorted broken and discarded miscellany.
Andy had errands to run Saturday, so I prepared to tackle the task alone. That was a mistake.
Please understand, I am not a novice at burning. If it’s a campfire you need, I am your girl. And there were many summers I could have gone pro at raking and burning pine needles.
I went out and assessed the two piles. Both were in the same general area, but the downed tree pile was enormous, and a little too close to the forested hillside for my comfort. I chose the mound of wood scrap and miscellany. Though it was the smaller of the two, it was still a much bigger burn pile than I had ever attempted before—about 15 feet in diameter. But at least I had the sense to only tackle one pile instead of both. Trying to manage both at once would surely be disastrous, I concluded.
Safety was the first priority, so I took my time to make sure everything was in place first:
I secured the burn permit from the automated system online so the smoke wouldn’t summon the local volunteer fire department.
I used the toilet, then filled my water bottle so I wouldn’t need a break right away.
I scoured the property and gathered a few tools—two different rakes, a shovel, and a pitchfork—then I raked clean a wide swath around the pile.
I linked together all the garden hoses I could find and stretched them out to the action zone, careful to make sure I could reach all the way around to the far side with ease.
I couldn’t find a working spray nozzle, but I pressed my thumb over the end of the hose and wet down the freshly raked area until it resembled a muddy moat.
I pulled my hair back under a hat and donned my work gloves.
Then I grabbed a fistful of dry pine needles from just outside the perimeter and tucked them into the heart of the jumbled mess.
Finally, I struck a single match and set it carefully among the crispy pine needles.
It was a beautiful spring day, puffy white clouds in a deep blue sky. The temperature was a little chilly—high forties, Fahrenheit—but it was a perfect day for being outside tending a fire. Operation Burn Pile #1 had officially begun.
An unexpected breeze immediately sprang up, whistling gently down the slopes of the Bitterroot range, through the trees and straight across the valley floor toward the Sapphire Mountains on the other side. The little pile of kindling roared to life and ignited everything around it.
So much for a low and slow burn, I thought. This could turn out to be a challenge.
Then the breeze mutated into a brisk gusting wind. The effect was immediate, like the powerful bellows pumping great gusts of oxygen into a blacksmith’s furnace. Within only a minute the pile became a towering inferno of flame. Between gusts, the fire easily reached thirty feet straight into the air. But when the wind hit it full force, the pillar of fire leaned precariously toward the hillside.
I hustled to extend the width of my muddy moat, tugging on the hose to move it around the circle without dragging it into the fire. I quickly soaked through my gloves as I sprayed the cold water willy nilly, alternating thumbs when one got tired.
It was suddenly more than a challenge. It was a genuine struggle.
But then it got worse.
No.
No!
I had completely forgotten about the cardboard.
At some point, someone had added a few large cardboard boxes to the pile. Over time, they had been buried beneath the other items on the surface. My best guess now is they were waterlogged from the recent rains, so it took a few minutes of intense heat to dry them out before they began to break apart.
And fly.
Corrugated cardboard, of course, separates into thin fiery sheets when it burns. The heat forces the sheets to float upward and drift on the air currents. The tiniest pieces don’t hold much heat and just fizzle out, landing as ash. The larger pieces, however . . . yikes.
You know those moments in life when so many wild thoughts go through your mind all at once that there’s no possible way you could express them verbally as quickly as you process them mentally? Yeah. It was like that.
The struggle morphed into a fierce battle, and I was the only soldier on duty.
Like paratroopers in reverse, the flaming bits of cardboard, aided by the westerly wind, headed for the trees on the hillside—and for the other burn pile. I aimed the hose like a weapon and attempted to shoot them out of the sky. But there were so many of them, and they just kept coming.
The whole place could burn. And not just our land—the neighbors’ too. A blaze in this area would spread like . . . like . . . well, you know. And it would be my fault.
I had to stop the cardboard flakes from launching.
I threw down the hose and ran for the rake, hoping to pull the remains of the boxes out of the inferno. When I approached the fire, though, it was too hot, even with the long-handled rake. I was nowhere near reaching the cardboard yet when the hair on my forearms sizzled and singed and I felt my skin develop an instant sunburn.
I tossed the rake aside and sprinted back to the hose, quickly blasting a stream of water into the glowing flotilla drifting ominously overhead. It felt like a terrifying real-life game of Space Invaders.
When the breeze slacked for a moment, I again focused on the cardboard still in the pile. Maybe I could use the hose to extinguish just that part of the fire—the boxes themselves. I dragged the hose as close as I dared and fired away. It wasn’t enough. Without a real spray nozzle, my thumb just couldn’t exert the pressure needed to reach that far without burning my skin. The spray just turned into mist, evaporated by the heat, before the water could reach the cardboard.
The breeze returned.
I aimed the hose up again, but I couldn’t get them all, not one at a time like that. There were just too many. I pointed the stream of water straight into the sky and pushed my thumb down for all I was worth, hoping to create a tall screen of moisture and humidity that the cardboard scraps would have to at least pass through on their way to the trees. Perhaps it would be enough to cool them down before they could land.
Just when I thought the situation couldn’t possibly get any more grim, the wind began to gust again, this time stronger than before.
The angle of the flames was dangerously low now, and its length stretched further than the moat that circumnavigated the burn pile. The paratroopers were no longer floating lazily. Now they seemed to be wearing jet packs, heading straight for the hillside and the other burn pile with purpose.
As I wrote about last week, people do some crazy things when they are desperate.
I turned to position myself between the roaring fire and the dangers beyond it, facing the blaze as close as I could get without being burned. I aimed my hose directly into it, my stance firm and my soot-stained face contorted in a desperate, squinty grimace. The water seemed to create a cooling wall between the flames and me, so I was able to move a couple of extra steps forward. I knew, though, that if I stopped spraying, even for a moment, disaster would occur. Not only would I likely be burned before I could move out of the way fast enough, but worse yet, the fire would reach past me to the fresh fuel sources beyond.
I held on, gripping the hose with both hands and pushing my thumb over the stream of water with all the strength I could muster.
After a few white-knuckled minutes, the wind abated.
Using the spray of water as a shield, I was able to advance close enough to drench the remains of the cardboard boxes, rendering them momentarily powerless. With that immediate need met, I was able to focus the water on particular hotspots and reduce the overall height and power of the flames.
Fairly quickly, the burn pile was under control. The battle was won.
With the worst of the crisis over, I realized I was terribly thirsty. I set down the hose (having completely forgotten the 70s solution to thirst), walked stiffly over to my water bottle on the other side of the burn pile, and drank deeply. I stood there for a moment to take in all that had just happened, how close we had just come to tragedy.
Away from the snap-crackle-and-pop of the furnace, I found I was cold. Oh, right; I was soaking wet from head to toe, I realized. I screwed the lid back on the water bottle and set it down. My old leather work boots sloshed with every step as I trudged through the mud, back to the fire, which already needed my attention again. It was manageable, but it would be a long day.
If only I hadn’t attempted to do it on my own. A second set of hands, a second set of eyes, a second water source, a second brain. Attempting this project alone was my biggest mistake.
Rugged individualism
Pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. The Lone Ranger. The scrappy frontiersman. Yee-hah. It’s the American Way, right?
We don’t need anyone else. We are overgrown toddlers. “Me do it!”
How foolish. We were made to be in relationship. We were designed to communicate, cooperate, collaborate, even commiserate. A Swedish proverb1 says something like “a shared joy is a joy doubled; a shared sorrow is a sorrow halved.”
And yet we still try to isolate ourselves and accomplish things solo—as if that proves something. In my case with the burn pile, it only proved I was foolish and hadn’t thought everything through ahead of time.
Of course, this post is about more than just me fighting a wildfire with my thumb on a garden hose.
It’s about this:
We are better together. We need each other. And that’s ok.
Yes, it is often possible to tough it out alone, but why? When we have the option of adding another human being to the mix, we should absolutely do it. It’s good for the asker, and it’s good for the ask-ee.
For some, this is a no-brainer, part of everyday life. But, if you are single, or in a strained relationship, or an introvert, this takes a little extra effort. If your family has grown complicated and you don’t really have any local friends, this takes a little extra effort. If you are traveling full-time, never in the same place for very long (HELLO), this takes a little extra effort.
Put in the effort. It’s worth it.
In with the new
About this new Substack-newsletter-thingamablog’s identity. I’ve been hinting at it for a few weeks now. The name Beauty and Truth Weekly served me well for a time, but as our lives become more singularly focused, it’s time to narrow the focus of this Substack, as well.
Yes, my eye will continue to be drawn to beauty, wherever it is found in the world. And yes, my heart will continue to yearn for truth, always looking to cut through the crap to what actually matters. But our nomadic life, wandering the world in our big yellow truck is bigger than that. Or is it smaller than that?
Living out of The Snuggery, our 8 foot by 16 foot habitation box on wheels, will force us into a lifestyle that is both very compact, while at the same being expansive and far-reaching. We won’t own much, but we will meet a wide variety of people from a myriad of backgrounds and locations.
Less stuff, more stories.
And although the scenery will no doubt be stunning, the real focus is on meeting people, listening to their stories, learning from them, supporting them—and being supported by them—in any way we can.
We are better together. We need each other. And that’s ok.
We feel like this is what God would have us do with the resources we’ve been given. We want to travel slowly, at the speed of relationships. Like The Little Mermaid, we want to be where the people are. We want to see them dancing. We want to ask them our questions and get some answers.
As we did in Southeast Asia recently, we want to go into the unknown and explore it until it is known—sharing it with you along the way. We want to use our simple wheeled lifestyle to make us readily available to roll up in service to others. We want to experience first-hand the inherent value in people from different lands, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different lifestyles and upbringings. We want to become so immersed in the commonalities of people made in the image of God that there is no longer a distinction between us and them, no longer ourselves vs. others. We want to take diesel fuel and turn it into dignity.
And there’s the new name for this Substack:
Diesel and Dignity
But we can’t and wouldn’t want to do this alone, without YOU. We are better together. We need each other. And that’s ok. We want you to partner with us, to come along for the journey, even from your own kitchen or front porch or park bench. More on how that partnership works—and why—next time.
Time to go to the polls
Which of the following logo designs do you think would be best for this Substack as I switch gears to write about our nomadic travels in the big yellow truck? And if you have specific thoughts about any of them, PLEASE add them to the comments section on this post. I would really love your feedback on these four very different looks.
I know which one is my favorite at this point, but I need some second and third and forty-fourth and a hundred and fifteenth opinions.
Here are the logo options I’ve worked up, and below them is the poll. The winner will be announced next week.
Every Head Bowed and Every Eye Closed
Remember how Jesus called The Twelve? Yeah, no. I am not Jesus and I am not calling disciples. Scratch that. But I do need twelve people to join my launch team and help me out over the course of three weeks coming up soon.
If you are excited about where this thing is going and would be willing to take some specific actions to help us get on the road, I could really use your help.
You don’t have to spend any money to do it.
You can spread it out over three weeks, or cram it all into one hour.
You make your own choices of which tasks work best for you.
Here’s a preliminary list of ways you could be involved at this early stage. If you are interested in joining the launch team, please contact me privately. (If you can’t figure out a way to do that, my email is quite simple—just my last name at Gmail.)
For those who DO join my launch team, I have a little gift I will send to you as a token of my IMMENSE GRATITUDE. I found these cool bright yellow luggage handles with a secret ID badge tucked away inside. They are long-wearing neoprene material with super strong Velcro, so they are not flopping around or coming off or falling apart, even with heavy use—like a luggage tag, but better. Best of all, your luggage will be very easy to spot in a crowd, and no one will ever mistake your bag for theirs. Plus, as a bonus, the bright yellow handle might just remind you to pray for us as we wander the world in our big yellow truck.
Launch team members will each receive a set of two of these luggage handles, as well as a postcard from me while I am out on the road somewhere. Remember when getting mail was fun? Yeah, we should bring that back.
And don’t forget about I-SAW
I wrote quite a bit about it last week, but I’ll remind you again—my new quirky and light-hearted travel photo Substack, assembled for no other purpose than to make you chuckle in a world that sorely needs more chuckling—goes live on May 31. Here’s your chance to understand a little more about it and subscribe ahead of time so you don’t miss a thing:
Whoosh. That’s a lot for one week. The fire that very nearly got away. The losses we suffer when we foolishly embrace rugged individualism. The new name—Diesel and Dignity. Voting on logos. An open invitation to join the launch team. The cool little free gifts for those who do. And, of course, International Signs and Wonders.
As our home-based lives are winding down, my presence here as a writer is ramping up—and for all the best reasons. I will never make much money at this, but I’m so excited about it, nonetheless. My economy has flipped on its head. I can’t wait to tell you more.
AND I want to tell you about one more thing that happened during the Great Burn Pile Adventure of May, 2024.
Until next week,
Sherry
The proverb is widely attributed to Sweden, according to everything I found online. Readers? Can anyone confirm or deny this?
I like the first one, but I'm voting for the 4th (in the poll)because without the heart shaped globe, it's unclear what it's all about.
I like 4, runner up 3. Fun creativity!