Elemental

By Nicole A. Musmanno

6a.m.
A seven-mile run in the darkness before dawn, under a near full moon, the black silhouette of giants always to the west of me. In the darkness their scars are hidden, only their austere outlines are visible, illustrating the strength that allows them to shore up and withstand the elements: water, earth, wind and fire.

Wind and fire, the rawest elements of the west. After all, here we get precious little water and we have expanses of land. The topsoil of which whips into frenzy when the wind crosses it like a funnel-less tornado. One little spark and up she goes. The birth of the spark, a mystery. From human, from nature, from technology, it is all the same to fire, wind and land. Sometimes the cause is not important when the elements are unleashed, only the need to move and move quickly.

But then the smoke makes of the sun a red orb with fuchsia highlights and you stop. Admiring the vision, this rare glimpse. Is this what soldiers witnessed on the battlefields when the air hung thick with musket fire and trees burned from cannon blasts? Or what the Natives noticed as they set their prairie fires to escape the encroaching white man or soldier infantry?

Primitive. So very primitive, fire and wind, and yet it makes of us, humans, humble in its presence. After all, primitive or not, it has the power to stop us, dead. The wind moving the fire at its will, the fire dancing to the notes the wind orchestrates. Yet the fire moves as she wills too, moving back uphill against the wind and creating its own drafts as it pushes faster up the hillside like a grizzly, faster uphill then down. A tenuous relationship these two ancients share, enemies sometimes, team mates at other times.

The wind pushes the fire across the earth, the fire scorches and in so doing leaves scars. Yet all is not lost with fire. The wind dies down. The fire, subdued by water reluctantly moves from the battlefield and the black earth begins to heal. Still smoldering, a familiar yet not totally familiar scent lingers, smoke, yes, but not of a ski lodge fireplace burning pinion pine or even a campfire. Wildfire. A mixture of earth and earthly things and, of course, fire, a gentle breeze moves the scent through the pre-dawn air.

Sunrise, mimicking the light show of the afternoon and evening before. Blazing bright clouds across the blue expanse like the flames moving across the golden winter prairie. Spring will come like the dawn and so will the new skin of green grass and the scars will be hidden, again, until next time and the process repeats. Elemental to life on the prairie and the West.