Thank You For Burning (eBook)

Chapter 1

Jan 15, 2016
Julia, Mt Baker, Washington

Julia slowly closed her eyes and gently, arms outstretched, fell backwards onto a pure white snow drift. The powder was so light she barely felt her fall end. Smiling sweetly at this she swung her arms and legs making a snow angel. The dry powder tumbled back down over her arms covering them to the elbow. She inhaled slowly through her nose letting the cold dissipate and the clean air deep into her lungs. She was thrilled by such a delicate cedar scent and an exhilarating breath of nature. Lying in stillness, dreaming the past and the future – the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there. She remembered Albert Einstein’s thought “a human being is part of the whole, called by us universe.” She felt warm insulated by her cradle of snow and stillness. Time slowed to match her breathing.

Above this clearing she had spotted marmots and mountain goats high up on the glacier. She had heard the wolf call and the pack respond. Even the memory sent a shiver of delight down her spine. She blinked snow from her long dark lashes to closely examine a cedar branch. She watched how precariously the flakes came to rest and how generously the dark green needles seemed to welcome them to their new home. Her breathing was the only sound other than the quiet gurgle of water beneath the ice encasing the nearby waterfall.

She stood and looked up through the arched black branches supporting the snow. High against the gray sky a female snowy owl wheeled around. Her majestic five-foot wingspan traced a spiral toward the tree above. Yellow eyes locked on landing, talons forward covered in puffy white feathered gaiters and body centered, her wings and tail feathers flared open. A final forward push of wings braked as she landed delicately overhead.

The sky exploded in powder cascading off every branch avalanching from above. Snow buried Julia back into her snow angel. She jerked up leaving her tasseled wool cap stuck in the snow, blew the snow out of her mouth, wiped her face, got up and brushed off the dusty coating from her hunter green parka. She looked up, grinning. As the indignant owl glided off she retrieved her hat, shook it off and adjusted her wool scarf.

Regaining her footing and upright posture she spied a drifting feather. Unlike any she’d seen before it radiated delicate spines out from its base like a bottle brush. The tip flattened to a plane. An elegant light gray design against the white looked like Northwest Haida art motifs. She twisted it slowly in wonder and used the shadowed trunk nearby for contrast to examine it closely. Her breath made every bit of it tremble. It barely had any weight of its own. Holding the spine tight she felt it press against the air. She carefully unzipped her parka and opened a space in the inside pocket over her heart. Gently she slid in the feather.

She lifted her knees high to walk down into the well around the tree trunk nearby and retrieved her caribou hide snowshoes. She planted them flat on the snow, laced and tied them over her boots. The dimming flat light of winter sunset reminded her to head home. She side stepped up to the clearing and built a walking rhythm over the light powder. She picked up her pace to beat the coming darkness. Winter days were too short. Even with the reflecting brightness of snow clouds blocked the light as darkness embraced the woods.

She began singing songs from her childhood and some bits of Woody Guthrie folk songs that came to mind. She had a strong, pretty voice, happily sharing her songs with the forest. She remembered Snowshoe Thompson, the mailman who delivered US Mail to the gold miners and high Sierra folks and sang to his memory. She picked up the trail along the streambed and followed it between iced outcroppings and dense cedar growths.

Deer originally made this trail. The cedar forest gradually opened to the snow-filled streambed. She carefully navigated through snow hummocks that covered the rock. Evergreen trees, Noble, Pacific, Silver firs and Mountain and Western hemlocks marched above the rocky cliffs in the gulley. They retreated from the frozen waterfall’s edge and snowy shapes finally unveiled the rock of the streambed. Ice covered the smooth lip of the falls as water cascaded into a black pool below her.

Now she could see the sun setting low in the sky, watermarking the silver haze as the trail opened onto a promontory. In the distance a sliver of the Nooksack River’s dull reflection and below the hamlet of Glacier. Here the trail split off from the stream toward her cabin and she took a final look up the magical canyon to the north face of Mount Baker. Julia lived in awe of the majestic mountain and thought how small she was on its slopes. Mount Baker or Kulshan anchors the Northwest corner of the Cascade Mountains.

Picture perfect on all sides; she is a stratovolcano. Like sister Mount Saint Helens she is active with plumes escaping at times. From the stormy mystery at the peaks to the placid beauty of Mirror Lake she offers a visual feast. Views to her North of Chilliwak and Vancouver in Canada and Mounts Glacier and Rainier above Seattle to the south are spectacular. The Twin Sister peaks buttress her flanks to the southwest. Mount Shuksan’s crags rise to greet the dawn on her east. Her slopes wear a cover of snow and ice equal in volume to all other Cascade mountains combined. One of the snowiest places on earth, she once recorded ninety feet of snow. Glaciers descend thousands of feet from her rock peaks before reaching the treeline.

Julia’s snowshoes squeaked on the dry snow as she walked the remaining mile on the trail away from the creek to her cabin. Arriving at a clearing ringed by trees in the heart of the woods she looked to her cabin on the far edge. Built of logs with rustic windows it seemed a part of the forest. Her ghostly garden beds buried in drifts were just outlines with some spooky stakes poking out and her aged Subaru dusted with snow. She took off her snowshoes and smacked them against her cabin to loosen the snow then hung them on the wood pegs set in the bark wall. Filling her arms with split pine from under the eaves she pushed the door open with her back and went inside.

The cabin’s exposed log walls were dark, even once she turned on lights. She kept her wool hat and gloves on while laying the wood for her woodstove, struck a match, and lit the splinters she had piled up. Instantly flames engulfed the logs inside. She closed the iron doors with a medieval clang and spun down the damper to tune the air flow of her fire. Gradually the iron warmed, clanking at each new energy level. She took off her hat and gloves.

Eventually water in the kettle set atop the stove boiled. She made tea in a squat iron Japanese pot. After it steeped she poured herself a cup. Heat transferred into her delicate hands gradually warming them back to comfort.

She went over to her bookshelf to see if she could find the quote stuck in her head and as she reached up the feather floated gently out of her open parka toward the floor. She caught it as it spiraled down and held it up once again. She took a photo from a small display holder made with a stone base and an alligator clip vertically attached by a cable, opened the jaw, and clipped the stem of the feather. It stood in delicate defiance with amazing structure and volume. She blew gently and watched the downy base flutter.

She looked through several of her books before she found the quote she had been trying to recall. “A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘Universe’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” She smiled thinking good old Al, always inspirational.

She connected her cell phone to the speakers and played old bluegrass and old folk songs, ‘Peace Like a River’ By Elizabeth Mitchell, then some hammer dulcimer music from her playlist. She took a mason jar container with a wire spring lid out of the refrigerator and admired the dark red beet soup inside. Then into a saucepan and onto the woodstove. There was a loaf of dense dark bread on her counter, and she sliced off a couple of pieces. Bringing it over to her wooden plank table and serving herself the borscht she closed her eyes, sat very quietly and still for several minutes, her usual grace. She enjoyed her dinner alone listening to music.

After cleaning up she got a novel and sat in her Stickley rocker and read. Around eight o’clock she went outside and started up her aged Subaru. Back inside she finished the chapter and put her book down. She dressed for her shift as a nurse at the Belle Clinic, grabbed her backpack and autoharp and went to the car. Now it was warm inside and the windshield clear. She didn’t like running it but knew from experience not to skip preparations with temperatures below zero. She tuned into NPR for her drive to Bellingham.

Driving carefully, in low gear, she navigated her steep, long snow-covered driveway, through the hamlet of Glacier onto the road along the Northern Fork of the...