Wicked Creek

When a forest fire burns, say from a lightning strike along Wicked Creek of all places...

Wicked Creek

the secret creek

I want to tell you about a weed. Sort of.

Before a weed can grow it begins as a seed. You know this, but it’s how the story goes. This seed, small and indistinguishable, ends up buried in the ground. If you were tasked with retrieving this seed from the ground, the one I have in mind, you’d be surprised to learn I’d be sending you to the ravaged remains of a forest once stricken by fire. 

When a forest fire burns, say from a lightning strike along Wicked Creek of all places – a place perpendicular to the secret creek where I chase cutthroat with a fly rod – the forest floor is charred. Blackened and crusty. Void of flowing green grasses and their tree waving neighbors. Instead, the Pines are naked, slender, and burnt to a crisp. 

To the untrained eye the expanse is ugly. And the ecosystem is wrecked. Can anything good come from Wicked Creek? 

This is why, you’d be surprised to learn, that over time, as the seasons turn, something unseen occurs. At the behest of nature’s mysterious whim a cottony seed (or two or three or more) floats itself upon the waves of the wind in search of a fire scar on the forest floor. During the first season, after the seed has found its scorched treasure, the invisible thing gets it in its head that it must wait a season to grow. Oh the suspense. 

As season one unfolds, the cottony, floating seed spends a year in the ground. Buried, but alive. We think. Season two: the seed has put down roots in the godforsaken land and called it home. Slowly, as the temperature cools, an herb begins to emerge from the singed surface. 

These seasons are like if you’ve ever traversed the landscape of abuse to find that anyone who stands for justice is burned and stomped into the ground. Or sent away, floating south. But after the fire has already raged, any little seedlings with a dream to bloom are pressed down. No fruit welcomed here. Move along. 

Only a crazy, cotton-headed romantic would find these conditions of pain and scarring ripe for growth. Who returns to the site of the fire to bloom? 

Once the seed has germinated in the crispy ground it begins to make its presence known. Before anyone can tell what it might become, it gets labeled a weed. A weed grows where it is unwanted. A weed grows in competition to what is being cultivated. 

This weed won’t quit reminding everyone of the fires that once ravaged their landscape and left people, I mean the ground, charred and lifeless. One gets labeled a weed when they keep poking up where they aren’t supposed to sprout. Don’t remind us of the fire, some seem to shout. Weeds are unwanted.

Resilient, you were only trying to bloom. You were only trying to paint the blackened forest floor a lavish, vibrant pink. But to bloom, to grow tall again, the seed had to go through the fire to germinate, and when it was seen again… they called it a weed. 

But I am a fireweed, the brightest of wildflowers.  

I am a fireweed, the brightest of wildflowers.