inspired to journal

Just Around the Corner
by Nan Fischer

Just around the corner, literally, is the hardware store. Just around the corner is a major breakthrough. Just around the corner the wildfire burns out of control. Many corners of many homes... lost. Just around the corner is the fire possibly here in my village. More preparation to maybe evacuate. The feelings around town are edgy, electric, uncertain. And the fire isn't as close as the wildfire of 1996. The possibility of that fire reaching us is... I don't know if it is very real, but it is very scary. To pack up important and irreplaceable papers, photos - pets, clothing. Peggy, after the fire of '96, was on the radio saying she didn't even have a toothbrush! What do you pack? What is so important you take it with you when you have 30 minutes to leave?

Just around the corner is a wind chime telling us it's too early for the wind to blow that hard. Just around the corner is a fire that will change our lives. Or just around the corner is a sigh of relief that the winds died down or it rained or it refuses to jump the river. Just around the corner is enough relaxation within ourselves to focus on helping those who lost their homes, their things, their histories. They live in the present with what they have at that moment. Until I can know that just around the corner my house, my family, my cat, my dog, my life are safe, I will be nervous, jittery, electric, always looking over my shoulder for smoke, a spark, a cloud.

(This is a freewrite about a wildfire I did in a journaling workshop in 2001. The prompt was "Just around the corner...")

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