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A wildfire has recently blazed through. CMarie's friend is dismayed: her beautiful wilderness, destroyed. But CMarie quietly finds this recent ruin beautiful. And she wonders if maybe fire has something to teach us about beauty.

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This episode takes place on Cheyenne, Ute, Eastern Shoshone, and Arapahoe homelands.

Host and Writer: CMarie Fuhrman Field Recordist: Jacob Job <a href="https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/2021">Award-winning</a> outdoor audio recorded in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado Editor: Erin Jones Producers: Rebekah Romberg, Kibwe Cooper Engineer: Luis Antonio Perez Art: Maria Juliana Pinzón Executive Producer: Brad Turner Additional Editorial Support: Jo Erickson, Emily Williams Thanks also to Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Arielle Wilson, Brittany Werges, Martin Skavish, Justin Peacock and Jon Pinnow

Terra Firma is a production of Colorado Public Radio's Audio Innovations Studio.

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This time to Northern Colorado, where we hear the sound of helicopters, surveying a recent burn and working to help our forests recover.

[Piercing bald eagle call, insistent “thwap-thwap” of a helicopter] “It looks horrible,” my friend says, looking at the burned landscape of the canyon. “My beautiful wilderness is ruined.” My heart aches at the words and I want to cover the ears of a land that has no say about fire, about regeneration. A land that I have loved since childhood.&nbsp;

This landscape has traditionally welcomed fire. It offers seeds adapted to fire, attenuated through burning, from era to era, cycling though stages of life as we, too, cycle and reinvent, regenerate ourselves. [Piercing call bird continues, helicopter thrums overhead.] Why do we only allow ourselves to see beauty in certain stages of life? Maybe fire has something to teach us about acceptance, about loving what is. Maybe beauty is the ability to witness without judgment. Maybe beauty is the appreciation of being alive to bear witness. [Lonesome, loud bird shrieks and echoes loudly.]

I know that this is not how I am expected to feel. Looking out across this landscape, the air thick with bitter smoke where trees still smolder and roots burn quietly in soil scorched soft. But I feel a certain awe and delight and wonder, better known to me as beauty. [Quiet ambient sound wind moving over the landscape.]&nbsp;

Years ago, walking through a forest regenerating from an old burn, my partner commented that the spectacular view we were sharing with friends was possible only because of a decade- ago-fire. Where we stood would have been a holy wall of trees, the thick brown of lodgepole and ponderosa bark, not the lakes and meadows we were admiring. The fire opened a temporary portal that already the aspen were reaching to fill. Can beauty hide beauty just as it holds it? [Helicopter chopping above.]

I understand the work of fire. I understand, like we all do, the endings it brings. I understand, too, that our perception of beauty has been skewed by how we have come to define it. How seldom we offer that word to the old, the decrepit, to that which does not hold perfect form or vitality of youth, green and lushness [helicopter chopping above, gradually louder and softer as it moves]. But I cannot help myself, as I look out onto the hills and up to the ridgelines [shriek of bird] I see beauty in this blackness, in the obsidian glint the husks of trees make. In the smoky dreamlike forest I now wander. There is a beauty in the silence. The planes have left, the wind of the fire is stilled. The work of rebirth and regeneration is quiet, for now.

Next year, when I return to this place, I know I will see yet another beauty. Maybe it will be the bright, wild strawberry that arises from the charred stump. Maybe it will be autumn, and the fireweed will rise like a refrain, echoing purple blooms. Those blooms will turn, as they age, to white wisps – a smoke-like imitation of the very element that wrought them. And there will be acres and acres of pearly everlasting [achingly lonesome bird call, helicopter returns]. But for now, it is smoke that stings my eyes, and ash that covers my feet. Perhaps our greatest test is not going to be whether we can learn to live with fire, but whether we can learn to withhold our judgment of it. To accept life in all its myriad forms and presentations and in this acceptance, begin to understand our place in the landscape [helicopter chops near and far]. Not as small gods with shaking fingers, but as mortal beings who not only witness beauty in its myriad forms, but add to that beauty with our words and with our actions. Isn’t this what it means to love? [Eagle call over sound of helicopter.]

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Terra Firma is a podcast about the outdoors, the sounds of the natural world and our place in it. Each episode runs about 5-10 minutes and pairs reflections on nature with gorgeous soundscapes captured in wild places.

Terra Firma

CMarie finds a recent ruin beautiful. And she wonders if maybe fire has something to teach us about beauty.

Beauty in the Burn (Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado) | Colorado Public Radio

Beauty in the Burn (Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado)

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Beauty in the Burn (Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado)

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