I started this blog post when smoke filled the air, ash was falling from the sky, the sun during the day and the moon at night were bright red and eerily muted - the Columbia River Gorge was on fire, and we had just been there the day before the fire started.
We had just seen the beautiful waterfalls, the historic lodge, driven the historic highway, and then we went to help build a cob (fancy mud and straw) wall for a house at Tryon Life community farm in Portland OR, and on Monday morning the sky was full of think smoke. While we were laboring together with dirty hands and feet and sparkles in the mud, we heard that a fire was raging in the beautiful gorge and threatening our friend's house there. The smoke was heavy in our lungs, and our hearts were heavy with questions. Was the gorge going to completely go up in flame? Was our friend's house going to make it? Water falling and cascading down the gorge into the river, engulfed in flames.
Sparkles are an important ingredient in earth houses, Jenny informed us. Every day, everyone who came to help with the building of the "cozy cob corner" was encouraged to add some sparkle, to pray a prayer, think good thoughts, say a blessing.
Building cob is a communal effort. It would be nearly impossible to do it alone - we need each other. Some are mixing the carefully determined recipe of sand, dirt, clay, straw and water (not actually corn cobs, as I first thought) ... others are building up the walls, building scaffolding to build up higher, and still others are measuring and testing the wall's integrity and straightness, shaving off excess, collecting the shavings and adding them back into the batches of cob being mixed.
When the fire broke out in the gorge, we learned we needed each other - we impact each other with our actions : the fire was started by teenagers throwing fireworks in the gorge, and the smoke from this fire combined with others was impacting the color of the sun and the moon all the way across the country in Maine! We need the firefighters who worked hard throughout the days and nights to protect the historic Multnomah falls lodge, and our friends house, and her tomatoes.
We need each other to be wise with forest management, conservation, and care, recognizing that fire is a natural part of a forest's cycle of life and regeneration, yet holding that in tension with preserving beautiful sights and our homes and gardens. And we need each other to be smart with fire and fireworks and what we do for fun and entertainment.
Together we can destroy beauty, or we can build something beautiful, we can add our prayers and sparkles into the mud and clay, and we can learn to support one another in community - this really big community called earth.