Fall Healing Moon
As Kate’s rehab improves her strength, the middle of the recovery process is underway and underway well. She’ll have gains to make at home, weight gain chief among them, and I won’t consider this incident over until she’s gained at least ten pounds.
In an interesting NYT article on refugia* I began to think about those searing moments of our lives when their landscape changes forever, denuded of the familiar, apparently ruined. Most of us have at least a few, some have many. College often sets loose a wildfire of realizations as the mind encounters strange ideas, ones that can wreck the delicate eco-system of childhood beliefs. Death of someone close, my mom, for example. A failed marriage, or two. Substance abuse and recovery. Children of our own. Moving away from familiar places. (and these are just from my life.) Getting fired. Getting hired. Selling your business. Finding a new, strong purpose.
In the heat of the fire itself, Kate’s visit to the emergency room and the various procedures, recovery from them, for example, it can seem as if all will be gone, nothing left of the old life, maybe not even anything worth living for. This sense of total destruction is often inchoate, a visceral curling up under one of those fire shelters the hotshots use. But there comes a time when the fire has used up all the available fuel, when it goes out, becomes the past, rather than the present.
In that transition from crisis to life in the burned over section, that’s where the refugia are critical. “These havens shelter species that are vulnerable to fires. Afterward, they can be starting points for the ecosystem’s regeneration.” Our love remains, protected by its watercourse way, cool and flowing even during the heat. The dogs and their rhythms remain, a furry oasis shielded from the fire by distance. This loft remains, a literal haven, not untouched, but intact. The house. Our friends who’ve followed Kate on the Caringbridge, near and far. Our family.
But the old forest, the one that stood when the flames rushed up the hill toward us, is gone. Kate will not return to the same house, not even to the same dogs, for they and she have transformed. The homeness of our house remains, but its configuration will change, how we use it will change, how we see it and understand its role in our future will change. The companionship of the dogs remains, but their lives will have to adapt to the new, and while adapting, will change the new in their way.
I cannot yet see how the refugia will repopulate the forest of our life. The fire is not yet out, the crews of hotshot nurses, physical therapists and occupational therapists are working to find hotspots and put them out, to build fire breaks and clear out old fuel. When their work is done, Kate and I will rebuild the wild forest that is our time together, our small contribution to the ongoingness. There is opportunity here, a chance to reexamine old habits, old dreams, old hopes, to reconsider them in light of the altered landscape. What will it give us? I don’t know. But, when Kate returns home and begins to heal here, on our old forest’s ground, we’ll find out.
*”The fires left scenes of ashen destruction, but they did not wipe out everything. Scattered about the ravaged landscapes were islands of trees, shrubs and grass that survived unharmed.
It’s easy to overlook these remnants, which ecologists call fire refugia. But they can be vital to the long-term well-being of forests. These havens shelter species that are vulnerable to fires. Afterward, they can be starting points for the ecosystem’s regeneration.” NYT
As I drove home yesterday from 
Feeling much lighter today. Kate’s headed off to 
We both hoped that a positive from all this would be a way to attack her persistent nausea. May have found it. If we have, it will make for something upbeat other than survival. Which was, of course, the first and most necessary result.
End note. I realized as I wrote that last paragraph that a key sticking point right now is uncertainty. Will Kate’s various medical issues resolve? That is, will she get well enough to leave for rehab? If so, when? If she’s in rehab, how long? How much care will she need when she comes home? I’m not wracked by any of these questions, but they illustrate the fundamental issues in play right now, with no clarity about any of them available. That’s what makes knowing how I might react so difficult right now.
There was some talk of how Zen my approach to all this has been. Thought about that. Really, wu wei. Often translated, inaccurately, as inaction. It’s a Taoist idea better expressed by Alan Watt’s book title, The Watercourse Way. Taoism and Buddhism in China created Chan Buddhism, the immediate influence on what Japanese Buddhist monks came to call Zen. Wu wei is a critical idea in that mix.
Instead with wu wei I try to follow the path of the chi, where vital energy is flowing. If Kate needs medical care now, I take her to the emergency room. If she needs diagnostic procedures or interventionary procedures, I learn what I can about them to help make decisions, to help both of us understand the implications. I interact with and try to make all of this happen as easily and effectively as possible. I’m not trying to force her medical care in a direction in which I think it should go.
What I can observe from this last week plus is that these attitudes, these ways of approaching Kate and mine’s current reality, has allowed me to sleep, not despair, not become anxious. In turn it means I’ve been able to show up in each instance where I was needed. To show up to what is actually going on, not what I wish was going on or what I think should be going on. Much, much simpler to follow the chi.
It is there, right there. Between 80 and 85 million years ago the Laramide orogeny found tectonic plates crushing against each other in that slowest of slow dances, continental formation and reformation. The result here at the hogbacks and all along the long collection of peaks and valleys we know as the Rocky Mountains shoved formerly settled layers of the earth’s crust into the air, up from the subsurface. The power and violence of the orogeny ripples past me, past all of us on 285, especially at the cut just before it dips under 470.