Brush Fire
by Gretchen Schulz
Shine II (2006) by James Lavadour. Oil on wood; 24 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and PDX Contemporary Art. First appeared in HDJ No. 5, Spring 2007.
Brush Fire
One washboard road traces
the length of that valley
cut between hillsides, textured
by sun-blanched yarrow,
cheatgrass and sage.
There was no time
to get the horses out—
tails lashing, nostrils splayed,
they milled about the dry lots,
in pungent haze,
as flames snaked closer,
turning sand to ash.
Mares and geldings wailed,
and we hosed empty barns,
while crimson trucks
held their line—
the whole thing
a hellish contrast
to dusty quiet.
The earth smoldered for days
before we rode
the blackened hills—
soot encrusted rock,
skeletal remains
of rabbitbrush, protruding
nakedly from the ash.
In the spring,
arrows of balsamroot sprout
alongside
the charred silhouettes
that still stand.
Gretchen Schulz is a middle school Language Arts teacher, a 2017 Boise State Writing Project fellow, and a 2022 Narrative4 Teaching Fellow. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho, and her writing has been published by ASCD and The Offing.