(Please be soft with the mix of present and past tense, I tried to force myself into consistency but I am both living and reliving this moment)
I walked outside and supposed the moon must be broken. Because like N.K. Jemisin wrote in the Broken Earth Trilogy, the world was covered in ash. Cars, fences, all the world. The sun had become a specter in the sky.
The world must be on fire.
I know California is on fire, but this is Nevada, what is so much ash doing here, I asked. I Google. Wildfire, maybe not so wildfire, 5600 acres, Reno. I think about how much closer the Bay and Washington are to Reno, and the people I love. I tried not to think about the people I don’t love up there but that are still kin. I tried not to imagine that the ash particulates are like dead bodies of plant ancestors and that I breathe them in. I cry and have to breathe deeper. Slower. More particles.
I instead imagine that our fellow Eukaryotes are not dead but transformed, transitioned by the element of fire. Just like when I burn incense, the Palo Santo, the ethically sourced White Sage. Transformed not dead. Not dead. I think of Palestine’s ash and cried harder, fighting it less this time.
It’s been months since I prayed over libations to the earth and elemental spirits, I thought. Greeted the directions. When I returned home to southern Nevada, the ancestral land to the Nuwuvi and sacred to many, the land greeted me so sweetly. Of the likes I had never seen in over a decade of life here. Did I greet them back? I feel ungrateful. I feel proud to have witnessed this beautiful desert land I love at all.
Plants are masters of transformation and resilience, and there’s so much to learn from them. I think of the Ginkgo tree’s lineage, last of its kind, overseeing many such transformations of ages past. The ancient organisms we pump through our fuel lines and power plants. Masters. And I find just enough courage to act, even if so small no one sees for a whole round of evolution.
Cue my playlist belting out “I'm not afraid of anything at all
Not dying in a fire, not being broke again
I'm not afraid of living on a fault line
'Cause nothing ever shakes me
Nothing makes me cry” - Sidelines, Phoebe Bridgers
preceded by the incredible Iniko, Kingdom, “When I take my crown
Ain't nothing stopping me now
Take me home
I'm looking for my kingdom I'm searching for my freedom Please grant me wisdom, oh
So I can go home
I'm looking for answers
See, l am the master Oh, just take me home
Take me home, home, home (ah, ah)”