fire into earth
cusping into capricorn season
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We did our first burn on Sunday. Mars was at the last degree of Sagittarius and I was very concerned about wandering fire. At our old rental, we were put on the middle level evacuation status on two occasions. First, during the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire in 2022. An ember from a prescribed burn slept quietly from January to April, when it was roused by an early windy season. That wildfire grew and joined with another, and together they consumed millions of acres. As of three months ago, people are still waiting for their FEMA payments.
Every morning and every evening, we’d sit and watch the updates from the fire chiefs and meteorologists on Facebook and local access. Sometimes on the portal, sometimes on the dusty gray sectional where we would start and end our days. Then we’d try to turn down the noise enough to go about the boring business of survival. Seeing virtual clients, filling orders, writing newsletters. Making meals and going to the dump.
I don’t think we ever even packed “go” bags during that first fire. We knew we should, but I couldn’t find my passport and we didn’t have extras of anything and I think Jennye and I were also a little bit in shock; waiting for the clarity of an immediate need to leave to snap us into action and help us figure out what we really should bring. There was something about the extended duration that wore on us—made it hard to stay present with the precarity of our situation. Try clenching your shoulders and holding your breath. Now imagine keeping that up for three months.
When the smoke wasn’t blowing towards us, I would lace up my sneakers and run back to the trail that adjoined our property. I would sprint and scramble up the craggy rocks that skirted the creek until my knees got wobbly and I was struggling to breathe, collapsing onto the granite slabs that teetered and craned towards the sky like so many lumpy pancakes. I was trying to exorcise the buzzy, jumpy feeling that was lingering as a low hum for months.
The second time, a spark from a chainsaw caught a slag pile while some guys were harvesting wood in Trampas. This one was 7 miles from us. I was coming in from the dog pen and saw a familiar wispy column; felt the drop in my gut. A dark plume was billowing and rising to the southeast. Jennye and I had made plans to take LSD that afternoon. As you might imagine, they were postponed.
Again, the threat level and evacuation zones were announced. Again, our little plot on the map was elevated to the middle tier. ‘Ready/Set/Go’ is the official emergency evacuation system here in New Mexico. Ready is red shading on your area. It means you should be thinking up a plan, and be sure to maintain defensible space around your home. Set is yellow. That was our level during these two fires. Set means you should have a go bag packed and have accommodations for your pets and livestock. You should have cash and water and other emergency supplies on hand, too. Green is Go; the final level, which means its time to evacuate and follow posted routes.
If you ask me, the color scheme is backwards. Green does not feel urgent in the way red does. But I guess yellow is yellow any way you slice it. The middle is the middle is the middle.
It is with this lingering anxiety that we arrived at this slim and shabby orchard and its charming house and chapel last January. Over the winter we pruned forty-ish trees, and tried to find any way not to burn the trimmings. Hugelkultur. Compost. Mulching. Dead hedging. Everyone told us, “You gotta burn!” We waved them off. Surely there was another way.
It’s not that we didn’t believe them—just that we were scared. It gets so dry here. Ragweed stalks and stands of wild licorice litter the fields, brittle as balsa wood and fit for tinder. Clouds of dust puff up with every small disturbance and rest as a fine silt on bumpers and door handles. In February I wake up with nosebleeds and cracks in the corners of my lips if I’m not careful. It is a constant battle to stave off the chapping, wrinkling, parching, and fading.
Seasons came and weeds and tall grasses consumed the brush piles. We got a quote for mulching from a very kind arborist and it was not uh—in our budget. I asked for chipper money for Christmas last year, and brought home a small one from my favorite discount tool store. I then began the arduous task of untangling and breaking down brush piles. Pulling out larger limbs to block for firewood. Unweaving 30’ elms from dried tansy and ragweed, thorns from the rose bushes trimmings piercing the soles of my boots and embedding themselves into my work gloves.
On a positive note, we did create some temporary wildlife preserves. Finches and nut hatches and robins dive and flit in around the piles. I’m sure the baby skunks that visited us in August spent some time exploring them, too.
I mulched around the compost and our raised beds, and started a large circle matching the canopy perimeter of one of the big double reds near the house, but it was slow-going, and clear that we were never going to chip our way out of this.
We finally resigned ourselves to burn, and asked our friend and neighbor if he would supervise the affair. He told us where the former owner used to do it and instructed me to cut a burn break in any dry weeds around the huge charred stump on its end near the west field.
And so Jennye and I busied ourselves preparing for Sunday. We spent two afternoons wrenching limbs free from the tangled nests of overgrowth and dragging them to the assigned spot. I grabbed the push-mower and cleared the stiff and sharp ragweed, kicking up billows of dust and occasionally bouncing its dull blade on the lava rocks and quartz that dot the lower field. I dragged out 400’ of hose, unkinking and feeding it from the hydrant in the dog pen down to the lower field.
We were nervous that the pile was too big, or in the wrong spot. Was it too close to the neighbors? Maybe I hadn’t cut a big enough fire break. I pictured a mushroom cloud of flames lapping up the dried timothy grass that had volunteered in the lower field, spreading through the bosque in both directions, devouring the undergrowth and bald cottonwoods. I imagined it leaping across our orchard from tree to tree, leaving nothing but smoldering stumps in its wake.
But we were already too far in, so we held our breath and I called in our burn on Sunday morning. It was a still day, and warmed into the mid 60’s by early afternoon.
At 10 on the dot, our neighbor pulled up in his old gold Ford Ranger. He drove it down to the burn spot and pulled out a Benzomatic torch and an antifreeze jug full of gasoline.
“It’s good you have the hose down here! And I’m glad you laid it out this way—long and not too high. If you have a pitchfork or shovel or rake, grab those. Otherwise this looks pretty good!”
Before I could make it up to the compost bins where the shovel and rake were, he had sloshed some gasoline on the brush pile in a few spots and sparked the torch. We were off!
Jennye came down and we caught up and walked the perimeter. Tucking in wispy bits, hosing down a ring in the dirt around the pile. Sometimes raking embers back towards the middle or using the shovel to smother them. I relaxed into the process a bit, fell into the rhythm of management. Negotiating the consumption. By 11:30 most of the initial pile had burned down, though there were still a few hearty limbs glowing. We started pulling more brush down. Another friend came to help around noon, and we fed the pile steadily until about 1:30.
Our neighbor headed out, and the three of us sat in camp chairs watching the pile smolder until sun down. We doused and stirred it, and came out again in a few hours to rake and bury the smoking char once more.
As I was shoveling cool dirt on the last embers Sunday night, I couldn’t help but think of the upcoming seasonal change. The way fire concedes to earth as planets move from Sagittarius to Capricorn. How fire must be waited out, calculated for, starved. How a Saturn ruled sign like Capricorn is perfect for the job. We don’t always get such literal and intimate experiences with the elements, but how instructive they can be!
I am thinking of the intensity of the heat, the dancing of the smoke. The courage and restraint it takes work with fire, to manage it. How tiring it can be. The way the heat robs you of energy, dulls your senses. The necessity of earth and water to help keep it contained, and their relative placements on the zodiacal wheel, enveloping every fire sign.
As we approach Capricorn season, I am also thinking about how far away the Sun feels right now. We don’t get full exposure on our patio table this time of year—the ecliptic is too far south—so the Sun never clears the towering Spruce trees and the roofline of our squat little adobe. Instead it warms our cars, parked away from the pine cones and the squirrels who harvest them and occasionally make pit stops in our engine compartments.
We are entering Saturn’s time. A season of cooling and consequence. We are asked to strip back what is superfluous and get to the bones. We are pushed to consider the trunks and limbs and scaffolds of our lives so that we might get clear on what needs reinforcing or paring down.
Soon enough, Solstice will be upon us, and the light and heat of Sagittarius will be put to rest, turned under into the cool dark earth. But beyond the longest night, the days begin to grow again. At first it is imperceptible. A gesture or suggestion; a slow building of faith. Repetition begets results. A few minutes each day, slowly stretching and warming.
What are you clearing? What dross are your burning away? How are you tending your spirit, your fire? What is longing to be put to rest, so that it may rise again with the Sun?
horoscopes
Your Sagittarius Season Horoscopes are here. Capricorn Season Horoscopes are coming on Sunday.
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