Final Note
Wildfire season comes and goes each year with varying amounts of acreage burned, structures lost, and sadly, lives lost. In passing, we might see the video footage, photos, and news reports of these fires, but generally it is just that…in passing.
In passing, because it’s not our acreage, it’s not our structures, it’s not the lives of anyone we know. It’s news, and, for better and for worse, our lives tend to be inundated with news. Most of which has very little to do with the various comings and goings of our day-to-day lives.
We had a log cabin in Montana, an authentic hand-made-from-the-bottom-up-inside-and-out-off-the-grid log cabin, and by “hand-made” I mean by our hands, the hands of the Ellis and Richter families. We have small hands, so the cabin took quite a few years to fully take shape.
Bits and pieces from our lives gradually came together like the notes in a song, each bit, each piece added something to the melody of our cabin. That melody slowly unfolded into verse and song. A song that seemed to perpetually add verses and to stretch on without end.
Is a song that stretches on without end a song? Logic and reason would indicate that a song, no matter how good, must have a final note. It must end. It must end, or we won’t get to listen to it in its entirety again and again and again…We won’t get to sit back with our eye’s closed and say, “this is my favorite part”.
We could have done without logic and reason. We all could have done without that “final note”. We all would forgo the opportunity to sit back with our eye’s closed and say, “this is my favorite part” for the joy that came from adding more favorite parts. The joy that came from adding notes and verses to a song that wasn’t supposed to end.
As we sifted through the ashes we found various bits-and-pieces, various notes that reminded us of a particular verse of that song we were composing. Maybe in time we’ll begin another song…maybe?
Until then, and most likely ever after then as well, we have the memories of something beautiful, something we built, something cherished, something good. A good thing gone. So it goes.
Thankfully, no lives have been lost in the Bobcat Fire that has burned over 30,000 acres in the Musselshell County of Eastern Montana. Most are not aware of this fire, some may have heard or seen a bit about it in passing, and that’s well and good. To know more than what one learns in passing about any wildfire is to probably know about something one wishes they didn’t have to know about.
We know about the Bobcat Fire, we know the acreage burned, we know the structures lost. We wish we knew nothing about it. We wish our cabin was standing on its ridge, the ridge with grass and trees gently swaying to the music of a never ending song.
We wish that all good things didn’t have to end.
