What Really Matters

We were at a neighbour's place at the beginning of the week - a tiny branding first thing in the morning and then I was going to run in to town for a doctor's appointment.

As I was helping prepare lunch, a friend arrived at the house with the news that there was smoke rising from the next place over. 

Nothing else needed to be said. With one accord, everyone who was able to help pointed their vehicles in the direction of the smoke.

When I arrived a few minutes after the first responders there was already one fire truck on the scene, as well as a water truck. People were stamping out small "hot spots" and hosing down larger ones. Just when you thought you had an area tamped down and soaked thoroughly, a curl of smoke would rise almost mockingly from the base of a tree or an orange spark would wink derisively. Just a typical grass fire.

Except this grass fire was right across the road from the house and yard.

As the wind continued to thrash the trees around and whip the grass into a frenzy, one of the neighbours who happened to be driving a grain truck by the scene stopped and positioned the truck so that it would put a wind block in front of the house and yard's driveway. "Just in case," he said.

Two more fire trucks arrived and stretched out along the lane. Neighbours shoveled and stomped and helped direct the heavy hoses. It reminded me of how the community came together to rescue us last year, and I resumed my stamping and peering in the ditch and up on the slope for any intimation of smoke.

After what seemed like half a day, not half an hour, they got here - mother and daughter, who have been through so much in the past 12 months. So many losses. So much sadness.

And now this.

One of the most tricky things about living out in the country can be how everybody knows everybody. This day, it was one of the best things: my friend Leslie and her mom, Joyce, could go from person to person and each one there could respond with a hug, a word of encouragement, an insider's comment designed to elicit a small chuckle.

Slowly, patiently, under the direction of our Fire Chief Jim, everyone worked until there was no more sign of danger. 

 

I had lost track of Leslie and Joyce; suddenly they appeared near me again. They had gone to the house, "just in case."

They had each retrieved one thing.

"There weren't many pictures taken of my Dad," Joyce said softly. "All the other stuff we could have replaced if need be. What really matters?"

 And as for Leslie, my beautiful Leslie - Panda was the only thing on her mind ...

Fire Chief Jim did one last walk-through, examining every inch of the affected area before giving the all-clear. One fire truck left, and that was the signal for us all to start dispersing slowly.

Final hugs, final words and the two ladies were off - destination Red Deer to buy groceries for the Byemoor Hotel's week, which would start bright and early the next day.

As I headed slowly off, I was profoundly moved by the clarity, the priorities, of those two valiant women. They knew without hesitation what really mattered to them.

Once again I was left to marvel at the community pulling together to help its own. "Could be us next time," one of the guys said gruffly with a rasp in his throat as he awkwardly patted Joyce's arm.

It's this rallying together - in times of both joy and difficulty - and showing people that they are important, that they matter, that makes this place split my heart wide open.

And we know that this kind of thing happens up and down the 855, all through Alberta and across our country.

At the end of the day, for the most part, we don't need to be legislated into loving our neighbour as ourselves.

At the end of the day, we all know what really matters.

Little Fire On The Prairie

We were just pulling into Stettler when we got the call: an area of the field where they were swathing had caught on fire. Cattle were nearby.

The words caught in his throat: he was choking on smoke as he beat at flames.

We called 9-1-1 and turned the truck around.

The ride back was swift and pretty silent. Would the fire trucks get there in time? Would the cattle be safe?

Most importantly, would he and the man swathing be safe? The excruciating encounter of the morning - a dad and his son working through the start of a new normal - took on heightened poignancy.

We also called our Pastor Paul from Hanna Alliance Church. He put the news on our little church's "prayer chain" and in moments we got a text from Dianne: "Marv and Cody are on their way."

It seemed like in slow motion, but in reality it was in record time that we turned onto our little stretch of the 855. We passed our driveway and the road with the tower.

And that's when we started to see the smoke. "Please let the fire trucks be there," we prayed through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. We had no idea what we would see when we went over the last hill before the field.

We never expected this:

The choking flames were out, drowned by great gusts of water from the Jones Farm's mammoth water truck. We learned later - over a couple of pops, as the great Don Cherry would say - that Mark had seen smoke, all the way where they are, and immediately got on the radio. He hopped into the water truck. Adam, Warren and two hired men hightailed it over to where the smoke seemed to be at its worst.

They beat the fire trucks, all three of them ...

And the people working said that if it wasn't for the Joneses, the area would have been a conflagration in a matter of a few more minutes.

There were Buchwitzes and Vistys and Munnses (Bud ripped up to their house, laying on the horn. Rhonda grabbed her boots and jumped in, no questions asked); Johnsons; Craig Nill; Don Hall; Somervilles and Quaschnicks; Clayton Anderson; a number of others who, when the worst of the crisis had past, quietly went back to their trucks and their busy schedules.

The thing is - this is haying season. Everyone is running full tilt. No one has time to drop everything for a neighbour in distress.

And yet that is exactly what happens out here.

Going to the dugout to refill

The Good Rancher and the Sidekick showed up shortly after the flames had ceased and desisted. He immediately went into action. I, with my metallic blue chappals (flip flops!) merely stepped on the edge of the charred ground and felt them start to melt. Rhonda's beautiful face appeared before me.

"Is this your first fire?" she said, looking keenly into my eyes. I nodded dumbly. "Go get a jug of water and some glasses. Everyone is parched. They need water."

This woman has rescued me from myself more times than I care to remember. I slid home, pulled on boots and a cap, grabbed water, trail mix and chocolate bars, and headed back.

When I arrived with the water a man was standing near where I pulled up. I couldn't lift the orange water cooler and so started filling glasses from where it sat on the back seat.

"Why don't you drive up the hill and take the whole cooler up there? It'll be a lot faster than walking glasses around to everyone," he said after he chugged the glass I handed him.

"I'm too scared to drive up that hill - it's so steep!" I wailed. "He should have married someone else; I am just useless in every situation that has come up since we've been married!" I started to hyperventilate, on the brink of a full-fledged panic attack. I walked in a circle with three filled glasses in hand, unable to think of what to do next.

What a perfect shirt to wear for a day like this!

The exhausted stranger blinked a couple of times, then quietly said, "You can do it. We'll just move this shovel out of the way ..."

I had missed running over a shovel by millimetres.

The other weapons in this war

He took the glasses from me, promising to deliver them to three men in the opposite direction. I climbed back into the Yukon and painfully inched my way up the hill to the fence. A couple of parched, weary people seized the cooler and took it to the back of the big truck for a much needed break.

(No wonder the man - a recent hire at the Joneses, it turns out - said to Mark, "I'm getting too old for this!")

After what seemed like minutes but was in fact a few hours, everything but a very few smouldering cow patties were doused or tamped down.

The fire trucks had left.

The new fence that Jesse Hebert had put up only days before stood the tests both of fire and of people climbing up and over it like a ladder ...

Mark's thumbs-up, all-is-well salute!

Blisters on my friend's hands

It was time and more for each person still there to get back to their previously scheduled commitments.

We tried to thank them as best we could for their help; Adam responded succinctly. "You would do the same for us. Thank you."

I moved in slow motion from one smoking cow patty to another, grinding my heel into each to kill the spark and ensure it didn't reach the nearby grass.

I felt hopeless and exhausted. This day had been terrible. Like two years ago, it seemed almost impossible to lift my head.

And, also like two years ago, God met me where I was. It was just like He said, "Here's a sign of hope even in the charred bleakness of this place. I will place it low enough for you to see with your head hanging down, and straight enough for you to know that there is beauty in ashes. I am with you even in the losses of this day."

How did a fragile, ephemeral little flower elude the flames?

I was reminded of a plaque I had acquired from Rhonda's quaint Gift Shop some time ago:

"Some see weeds ... Others see wishes ..."

I closed my eyes and made a wish. It turned out to be more of a prayer. "Dear God, please send rain ..."

Two nights later I got a panicked call from Rhonda: There was a fire in the corral behind Cattlemunns Ranching Gift Shop.

I hopped in the Good Rancher's truck containing a tank with 500 gallons of water, and took off. By the time I found them, Bud had ploughed over the flames - caused by a lightning strike - and a few fat rain drops sizzled as they hit the overheated earth. Alas, they dried up as we stood there.

The sky was bleeding red this night. Birds were agitated and Bud's fence where he had to charge through with his tractor was now in need of repair.

 



As I slowly climbed back into the farm truck, thankful that the damage this night was so minimal, grateful for the neighbour who looked out of the window at just the right time and saw the lightning and picked up the phone, amazed at the practicality and sense of humour R and B can maintain in times of stress and danger.

And I thought of my plaque with even more urgency.

"God, please bless all those who were so kind to us just about 48 hours ago. And dear God, please send rain. We are getting pretty desperate. Thank You."