inferno

Quick update to the fire post I just wrote about.

Life is so full of lessons. And sometimes you're not sure which lesson you're learning.

Did you ever read the part in the Bible about God leading the people of Israel by a pillar of fire by night? It's quite possible we witnessed this last night.

I had finally finished cleaning up a bit inside and decided to take Diego out with me and sit by the warm fire Juan Pablo had been tending.

He loves to fill me in on how many leaves and dead trees he's burned, so he told me he had just burned one of the bushes we had pulled (two years ago!) and I glanced at the fire and didn't see a trace of it.

Me: "Wow. It's completely gone."

JP: "Yeah, it burned really quick."

Me: "Burn another one. I want to see."

Ooohh, I wish I'd never said that.

He goes over and drags back one of these huge, twiggy, dried up bushes that have been sitting out there so long, they've become part of the landscaping.....and he throws the whole thing on the fire. The reason we pulled these bushes up in the first place was because they were TOO BIG. So this giant dead bush is now spilling over the edges of the ring by several feet, and it's mounded on top of the fire about three feet. Juan Pablo is stepping on the root ball to keep it steady.

I watch its spindly branches quickly light up and then my jaw drops open as a blazing pillar of flames shoots about thirty feet in the air... taller than our house. The flames are racing up like someone poked a wide hole in the ground, and a geyser of hot lava was trying to escape its years of captivity. Diego was sitting in my lap saying, "Oh my God." I was frozen in my seat, unable to take my eyes off of it, but repeating, "I'm scared." The winter branches of nearby live trees were in my line of sight, and I could only imagine them catching fire and the whole woods flaming up. And there was nothing we could do but watch in awe and pray that it would all end quickly and peacefully.

I kid you not ....that bush was gone in four minutes flat. Juan Pablo and I just stared at each other with the most astonished looks on our faces. Really, we were speechless at what we had just witnessed.

Isabela came out just as the fire had completely calmed down, oblivious to the whole thing, "Nice fire, Dad."

Lesson (among others) learned: Don't throw giant well-seasoned bushes on your fire.

I'm just glad we didn't have to learn it the hard way.