Late last night a neighbor called to ask why the police were on my family property. Of course, I jumped in the car and headed to the fields to investigate. It turned out that it was the fire department, not the police, and that yet another fire had been set in the fields behind my home. (My guess the arsonists are the same quad of teens that lit off bottle rockets in the wheatfield during the summer, and have repeatedly gathered in this spot, with fireworks, for the last few months.) This time it was a small blaze, which the fire chief I spoke to guessed the winds had stoked from the earlier fire. The night before, the flames had reached close to thirty feet, took three hours in the early A.m. hours to put out, and oddly, we hadn't been notified that it had happened at all. Luckily, the fire didn't leap the walking trail that flanks the fields and head over to the subdivision. As for taking action, it appears that whoever is setting the fires must be caught on the property, in the act, for any action to be taken.
A few years ago I wrote Carry the Winds and the Open Spaces about a young man abandoned as a toddler and left to foster care who turns to arson as a release. After he flees yet another home, finds refuge sheltering under trees in public parks and ultimately, in the mutual need of a stranger. I've posted the title and epigraph here, (I removed the story text since a friend told me that some editors consider publishing on a personal blog, publishing. Hmmm, I should know this.):
Carry the Winds and the Open Spaces
Even those trees you planted as childrenbecame too heavy long ago –
you couldn’t carry them now,
But you can carry the winds…and the open spaces…
Sonnets to Orpheus – Rainer Maria Rilke
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