Bighorn Fire
by Jane St. Clair

On Sunday, June 6, in the morning, I went out to greet Pusch Ridge. It’s a daily ritual to me, along with wishing good night to the constellation Orion.

It surprised me to see that Pusch Ridge was on fire. I felt sad, like you do when you see a friend in trouble.

Yet the Bighorn Fire, as the fire fighters named it, was darn interesting. Interesting in the way natural processes are, like a spider spinning a web or a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. I couldn’t stop watching it. I wondered if other people stood where I was standing now and watched a fire on this very same mountain five thousands years ago.

Probably.

The Bighorn Fire keeps spreading. People in Tucson keep track of it, like you keep track of numbers in the corona virus. 13,000 acres burned, 5% contained. 27,000 acres burned, 15% contained. Today the fire still marches forward in its relentless way. After more than three weeks, the numbers say we’re at 115,000 acres burned, and 45% contained.

Fire fighters tell us it’s dangerous out there because the Bighorn Fire hides inside deep canyons. Big planes survey and then come back to drop red retardant over it. This makes red patterns all over the mountain range. They look like the artist Cristo made them.

The Big Horn Fire is not eating up houses and garages and such. When it got near the town on top of Mount Lemmon last week, fire fighters diverted it away from property. At this time firefighters have had to evacuate only a few communities. The fire has killed over 3000 saguaros and many other trees and plants. It is blackening whole sides of the mountains.
Sometimes you can see flames, especially at night. The fire fills the mountains’ canyons and crevices with smoke like giant witches’ cauldrons. Sometimes smoke goes straight up in the air. Other times it goes up in little puffs on top of one another, like a series of ruffles.

But sometimes it’s just one big blue fog. The air smells like a burnt-out fireplace, while all the smoke makes it hard to breathe, especially with a mask on.

I am watching Pusch Ridge, knowing it’s not over. A bolt of lightning caused the Big Horn fire, not careless campers or smokers or anything like that. The fire is part of nature.

We are praying for rain, like the people who lived here so many thousands of years ago. Somehow I have the feeling that everything will be all right. And this mountain, like so many other things right now, will one day go back to being himself.

To see how Pusch Ridge is on a normal day, go to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.