Smoke is usual when the forest of the North Rim burn, but flames are not. Even the highest flames are small in comparison to smoke. They are almost indistinguishable from the forest itself. This is an odd occurence when something that is so distructive is almost invisible from view.

I say almost invisible because when it is dark, the smoke releases its pre-eminence. Smoke becomes invisible, but the orange tongues of flame stand out in the darkness. Last night flame was visible in pockets of the dark bulk of the canyon rim. It was not as prominent as flame that I saw one night from the area of the Desert View watchtower on the east end of the South Rim. That was an enormous swatch of land maybe as much as half a mile. This was a dot of color in comparison. However, the fire was closer and I could see distinguishable individual flames from across the gap.

What we can learn from this is that destruction can be powerful even as it is hidden from our view.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2005 at 9:23 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.