When you walk through fire, I will be with you...

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me. 

I will look on the fire and tell you from the gray lashes 

And out of the red and black tongues and stripes, 

I will tell how fire comes 

And how fire runs far as the sea
.

By Carl Sandburg

Fire all throughout the Southwest--it is burning, eating and consuming every single thing in its way.

from a distance

Residents are looking back at the fire, as they drive away with just clothes and photos.

From YouTube site

Dry dry air, heavy and suffocating.  Sun scorching burnt earth, 100 degrees or more. Tinder dry vegetation, ready to burn.

Oh, God!  Please protect the firefighters!  

Oh, God! Bless families whose homes are burned to the ground!

Every summer, I post about wildfires.  Last year, we could see the flames from our house. One year at a school where I taught, ashes covered playground and swings from a fire 25 miles away.

The photos below were taken from my porch.

From my front door during the day....

Along Witch Creek

Sun lies behind the hill

Gray and pink...

Wisp to Wild

Grasping, consuming.

Swirl upward--

A gift to fires

of all fires.

Witch Creek,

Poinsettia,

Paradise 

Cedar,

San Marcos,

Elfin Forest, 

Mount Palomar...

Coco..

Other battles without names.

Burn to the ocean

or Stop at the crest?

Fiery tongues lick cold

Impassive walls.

Left empty and deserted,

Waiting for the end.

Homes and trees

To rest, layer upon layer.

White and Gray.

Green life, now absent,

Arizona

 

Becomes moonscape

in moments, in hours.

All for 

A Sunburnt Sun,

Fire at its witching hour.

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me,

I will look on the fire and tell you from 

       the gray lashes

And out of the red and black tongues and stripes

I will tell how fire comes and how fire runs 

        as far as the sea.

Carl Sandburg Fire Pages

Over the thirty years of living here, we have seen and experienced wildfire. Photos cannot do justice to the horror fire spreads. No one can know the fire, until facing it down from one's front door.

Just a few hours ago, smoke rose over the acres north west of us. We smelled the fire before we saw the fire.

Donations to the American Red Cross can be made at: Red Cross Donations

Time. Time. Time..

Passing Time

During these past almost three months, time seems to stretch from breakfast to dinner. Not that those two meals are just fine in themselves, but something to stimulate the sleepy, food-numbed mind would be nice.

Time. Time. Time.  That has a good rhythm and rhyme. Rhyme.

Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, WB Yeats, Maya Angelou, Carl Sandburg....and many other poets can provide creative thought during anything.

A poet's words can capture time and hold onto it just a bit. 

“Time is the coin of your Life.

It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine
how it will be spent.
Be careful
lest you let other people spend it for you. And when you spend it, spend it wisely so that you get the most for your expenditure.”

Carl Sandburg

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. 

Confucius

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. 

Mark Twain

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. 

Buddha

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. 

Leonardo da Vinci

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Maya Angelou

Do not think that I am so brilliant and creative enough to hunt for all these and compile them. Heck, no. I just happened on to this site. Good thing to pass on.

Brainy Quote

Great Minds, great words

Ashes to Ashes

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me. 

I will look on the fire and tell you from the gray lashes 

And out of the red and black tongues and stripes, 

I will tell how fire comes 

And how fire runs far as the sea
.

By Carl Sandburg

Fire all throughout the Southwest--it is burning, eating and consuming every single thing in its way.

from a distance

Residents are looking back at the fire, as they drive away with just clothes and photos.

Dry dry air, heavy and suffocating.  Sun scorching burnt earth, 100 degrees or more. Tinder dry vegetation, ready to burn.

Oh, God!  Please protect the firefighters!  

Oh, God! Bless families whose homes are burned to the ground!

Every summer, I post about wildfires.  In 2014 , we could see the flames from our house. 1994 at a school where I taught, ashes covered playground and swings. That one was called the Witch Creek Fire

Below are photos I took from our house in 2014.

Fires like these will happen until December. Last year, many wineries near Napa were ruined and burned. It took three months to extinguish that fire.

P.S. This was a re-post updated from 2014.

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me.

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me. 

I will look on the fire and tell you from the gray lashes 

And out of the red and black tongues and stripes, 

I will tell how fire comes 

And how fire runs far as the sea.

By Carl Sandburg

Fire all throughout the Southwest--it is burning, eating and consuming every single thing in its way.

from a distance

Residents are looking back at the fire, as they drive away with just clothes and photos.

From YouTube site

Dry dry air, heavy and suffocating.  Sun scorching burnt earth, 100 degrees or more. Tinder dry vegetation, ready to burn.

Oh, God!  Please protect the firefighters!  

Oh, God! Bless families whose homes are burned to the ground!

Every summer, I post about wildfires.  Last year, we could see the flames from our house. One year at a school where I taught, ashes covered playground and swings.