by Marina Weatherly, Stevensville
A few weeks ago, lightning struck on the mountain just above my home in the Bitterroot Valley, and a wildfire, fanned by strong wind gusts, quickly raged across the mountainside. Evacuation notices were quickly issued in my neighborhood. My husband had just left town, but many folks immediately offered help and a safe place to stay. Strangers were volunteering trailers and pasture for livestock for my neighbors and trucks and trailers rumbled up and down the road evacuating animals. Within just a few hours my neighborhood was evacuated, and I spent that night and many others watching the flames dance wildly on the mountain from where I was safely camped.
Over the next 12 days of evacuation and active wildfire, I witnessed incredible teamwork, sacrifice, respect and caring between neighbors, community, County Sheriff’s Departments, Red Cross volunteers, and the over 600 fire personnel: Fire protection teams, Rural Fire Departments, U.S.F.S., D.N.R.C., pilots, wildfire contractors and Incident Teams and Hot Shots from all over the country. The large fire camp at the end of my road was efficient, the mood respectful and focused as everyone worked together cooperatively on a complex operation with a common goal.
Now, three weeks later, we are finally blessed with rain and our beautiful valley is no longer engulfed in thick smoke from this and many other fires burning in the area. Unhealthy air alerts have been lifted. Our homes, thankfully, are safe and I am so grateful to all those who worked so hard around the clock to protect them.
In a county of extreme divisiveness, like so much of our country, there was, for a brief moment, a spirit of unity and caring for one another. Everyone was supporting each other, respectful and grateful on both sides for the cooperation. Neighbor helping neighbor, stranger helping stranger – regardless of differences, politics, ideologies and personal agendas. All that noise dissolved, and we were just people helping people. But it took an emergency – the threat to loss of homes – for this to come about.
I can only hope that this same spirit of unity and caring can manifest in all of humanity to protect the home we all share. For it too, is under threat. It can no longer be denied that our home is in crisis and is responding with increasingly intense natural disasters in many forms and the expense of reparation is becoming unsustainable to us, the taxpayers, not to mention the personal losses of world-wide displacement, suffering, and often death for both humans and the natural world. We have no other place to evacuate to, and only now, this moment, to act together in unity and cooperation to help our neighbor, strangers and all of humanity to protect the only home upon which our very existence depends – for ourselves, our children and grandchildren and their children. This should never be a partisan issue, for we all share the same home. But until a cultural shift happens, let’s put our differences aside and unite in November and thereafter for this one worthy common goal and choose leaders who truly care about protecting our only home now and into the future. There’s fire on the mountain, folks, and the wind is picking up!
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