August 29, 2011
I drove to Kalispell last Tuesday to attend a Wednesday morning hearing of one of the Montana Legislature's interim committees. The August sun beat down on the asphalt. A hot breeze blew hard even at the top of McDonald Pass. The beetle-killed pine trees lined the road in both directions and marched en masse to the horizon.
I took a right on Highway 83 from Highway 200, not far from where the Clearwater River dumps into the Blackfoot. Both rivers were running low, lucky to pull any water away from the parched earth. There was an orange sign on the side of the road that read fire crews ahead.
I couldn't help but think that it was amazing how I'd driven all this way through tinder-dry wilderness and this was the first sign I saw of wildfire. It had been a wet June and July. To my left, snow still capped some of the peaks of the Mission Mountains.
Montana was well on its way to escaping fire season relatively unscathed. This would be the third year in a row - a minor miracle considering the fact that the pine beetle-ravaged trees caught fire easier than cheap charcoal. Four years ago, the state had already been burning for two months by now.
Now we were preparing to have football season start before fire season had much more than kicked off. I counted our blessings and continued driving north to Kalispell.
The next day, I traced my way back down Highway 83 through a smoky haze. I figured that the Swan Lake fire had stirred up a bit over the night, but when I hit Highway 200 it was clear that the smoke was coming from more than one fire. The Blackfoot River was cloaked from its headwaters on the Continental Divide until it dumped into the Clarkfork River 75 miles away.
I'm often wrong about things, but seldom does the level of wrongness become that clear, that fast. Usually my wrongness tends to meander back and forth, just below the surface; until it finally pops up and sweeps me away. I cleared my mind and continued onto Butte where I had one more meeting, before heading home to Helena.
I drove down Interstate 15 and into the Helena Valley that evening. The sun was low in the West. A huge cloud of smoke rose up in the sky from the North, beyond the Scratchgravel Hills. It was obvious that we were on the front end of a miserable couple of weeks, if not months.
I couldn't help but think how often I misjudge life's adversity. No matter how many times I'm proven wrong, I still think that if I do certain things or follow the right steps then things will be okay. The chaos of life will settle down and drift along as gently as the Missouri River beneath Holter Dam.
Life doesn't have a Holter Dam. Churning adversity will appear before us, no matter how hard we fight to avoid it. When we clear that set of adversity another round will pop up from a direction that we do not expect.
In the midst of this turmoil, most of us will ask God to clear the way for us. Sometimes those prayers will be answered, but for the most part they won't. I will not hazard a guess about why some are answered and others are not, but I know that we are not called to paddle gently down the meandering river of life. We are called to immerse ourselves in the struggle.
Often, it will feel that we're about to lose the fight. The things that we fight to hold onto are ripped from our grasp; but, those losses are not as tangible or permanent as they appear. The Divine scores our wins and losses differently. As described by Jesus, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" Mark 8:34-35.
It's a strange system and one that we are not meant to completely understand. We build our life knowing that the fire will claim some of it and we will have to build again. Success and failure falls on upon us all. We love and we lose. The task at hand, our general directions, and the final goal are the only givens. Thankfully, that is enough.
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