Viewpoint
That Which Never Changes
by Nicole Pugh
“Bring the earth your love and happiness.
The earth will be safe when we feel safe in ourselves.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh
As of the time of publication, the fires of October, 2007 have, for the most part, been contained. The majority of the evacuation centers have been closed and individuals and families in many communities have gone back home to assess the damage that this historical natural disaster has caused. Hopefully, in time, many of the over 2,000 homes that were lost in the greater Southern California area will be rebuilt and those in need will receive the assistance and care that will help them make a new start. And someday, us Southern Californians who long for “normalcy” to return to our region may get our wish, at least on the surface. Yet, perhaps even a year from now, in those rare moments of stillness that creep in to the daily grind of our very adult lives, we may get a whiff of something in the air. We may sense, for just a second, the significance of the shift in the atmosphere that this event has caused. The sights, sounds, emotions and experiences of the fires have been breathed in with the smoke and ash, changing our collective experience from this day forward.
Some people balk at making comparisons between the fires and other natural disasters that have occurred during the last five to ten years. Others make over-inflated assessments in terms of quality of service and behavior of individuals. As a survivor of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a person who practices (with varying degrees of success) to see the deeper meaning behind every circumstance in life, I can’t help but see this event within a larger context.
In August of 2005, I left the city of New Orleans as Katrina barreled its way towards Louisiana. We woke up at three a.m., packed our things, packed the car, packed the kids, and joined the slowly moving snake of traffic on the highway towards the Mississippi border. My friend’s eight-year-old son was sitting next to me in the car. He pointed out the birds that were flying overhead.
“They are fleeing too,” he said. I had seen this particular kind of bird flying across the sky over the city on many occasions. Normally, they fly in a V-formation. On this particular day, however, they bulleted around pell-mell like scattering ants. The sight of them told me that something significant had arrived.
Fast-forward to day two of the fires of 2007. I was at my parent’s house in Vista, California. Suddenly, I stopped what I was doing and looked outside. A large, black mass was descending upon the grass in the backyard. It was a gaggle of ravens, no less than 20. They landed with precision and squawked and pecked for about a minute. Then they were gone. I have never seen so many of them descend with such organization. I stood dumb-founded at the window for a long time afterwards. Those ravens told me that, at that very moment, something significant was happening. Signs from nature that indicate the pulse of the planet can happen anywhere, at any time—in the backyard, in the sky, even in our dreams (see feature article, Snow Goose).
On day three of the fires, my parents flew back from vacationing in Lake Tahoe, preparing to evacuation. The next day, my father and I visited the just-established El Camino High School Evacuation Center in Oceanside. By the time we arrived, the center was full to capacity, mostly by people fleeing the fires in Fallbrook. I spoke with Jose Banda, Deputy Superintendent for the Oceanside Unified School District (OUSD) and Tim Ware, OUSD School Intervention Manager. The school district had begun planning with city officials early in the week to prepare for possible opening of the shelter. At the time I visited, the care that had gone into the shelter’s creation was clearly evident. I also met with volunteers Sue Bergdahl and Carolyn Puga.
“I had to do something,” explained Puga. The commitment and dedication of the volunteers at El Camino High School and the dignity and grace of the evacuees who came there reminded me of so many similar interaction involving dozens of people—FEMA workers, Red Cross volunteers, everyday folks—during Katrina. These individuals opened their homes and their hearts for me and my loved ones in 2005. Now, under different names and in a different state, they are doing the same for a new group of evacuees.
I have been accused at times of seeing the world through “rose colored glasses.” However, through first-hand experience with two of the biggest natural disasters and evacuations in our nation’s history, the single thread that I see that runs through these events is the ever-present opportunity that they provide to witness and be a part of the energy of connection—people to people, people with the Earth, and the Earth herself with myriad living creatures and organisms that inhabit her.
We human beings take in the experiences of our lives like water and assimilate them into our essence every day. As a result of our experiences with the fires of 2007, our cells are imbued with deeper memories and our hearts beat within our bodies in a slightly different space. Akin to experiences of birth and death, the fires changed us because they brought us closer to that which is, on one level, beyond our control. The golden nuggets in the middle of the chaos are the decisions we make within that space, when we are brought just a little closer to that which never changes—the ever-present pulse of love and life in all its forms, both tragic and joyous.
Nicole Pugh is editor of Vision magazine.