Nothing escapes a wildfire. The ancient trees are reduced to thin specters of their former majesty. Memories of once green mountainsides are greyed and balding with thin wisps of blackened trunks. There is little glory in the wreckage left behind after such a battle. The fire is my only reality of this place.

            And everything this year tastes of smoke.

            I came to Holden Village, a small intentional community nested in a valley in the Cascade Mountains in the summer of 2015. My first day of work began with the whole community forced to evacuate due to wildfires.

            Nearly a year later I can now look at the ashen landscape and start to see greenery venturing out of the soot. Even the charred trees look a little less ominous. But, this valley will always remember the fire. And while these flutters of growth are inspiring, they do not take away the memory of what once was. Even after the soot is all gone generations will find an ashen layer deep in the soil. Similarly, if you dig down, there might be a thin line of soot, splinters and words under my own skin. More than simply the fire, this village has marked me in ways that I cannot yet articulate into words.

            When words fail I turn to art to say what my words cannot. Once I can put my experience into words I will have found meaning in the fire and in my time here. Rationally, I understand that fire is part of the natural cycle just as pain is part of the circular rise and fall of human life. But, I have yet to make meaning, so I make art.

            This piece intends to be both a personal representation of the parts of myself I have shed during my time in this community and a small monument of the Wolverine Fire that dramatically changed the nature of this valley. The burned and melted fire hose used by the hotshot crews to protect this village writhes on a disjointed wooden lamination. The hose is unusable for its created function; it is too burned and broken to hold water. Through the twisting of a melted piece of plastic and the collage of wood this hose and scrap wood have found new meaning by transforming into art.  Like this hose, I hope that I too can find the value in my experiences.