Sunday morning in the capital region was windy but beautiful, with trees covered in spring fresh green leaves rippling against a perfect blue sky. Life was good in a small wooded West Edmonton park, where chickadees frolicked, big, red-headed pileated woodpeckers nested and squawked, bush bunnies scampered, and a foot of poplar fuzz covered the forest floor like an ethereal mist.
On Monday morning, the scene could not have been more different. The well-used park that has greeted hardy dog-walkers year round, where neighbourhood friendships were forged, where children built forts in the woods, where generations of young teens have walked tentatively hand in hand had become forever different. The trees and bushes that were budding into life Sunday had either disappeared or remained as charred stems. The biggest poplars had been cut down. The forest floor was now a bed of sodden black ashes that smelled like an old campfire.
Albertans, and particularly those from Fort McMurray have been through a horrible week of fire. Some of the images of the fires have been spectacular, like those of residents fleeing their exploding neighbourhoods. Others have been terribly sad, because wildfire, being wildfire is unpredictable and shows no mercy for anything in its path. Families, made up of ordinary children, older people and those in the middle have lost everything they have, though through the grace of good emergency planning or perhaps good fortune all but one family still have each other.
As in Fort McMurray, but on a vastly smaller scale, the small wildfire in Edmonton also forced an evacuation, though only of the immediate neighbourhood as floating embers, blown by the wind started fires in three homes, one a few blocks away from the park. For a few hours, residents were not allowed to drive to their places. Some left with their cats and dogs, people on the sidewalk wondered what they should take. It was no tragedy, but it did provide some anxious moments, to be sure.
There has been a lot of talk in the past few days about stuff, just being stuff. About how it doesn’t matter as long as people have each other. To a large extent that is true, whether they are fleeing flames in Fort Mac or missiles in Syria. And any feeling person would gladly trade all of the stuff they have for a few moments with someone they have loved and lost forever. But we also should also be careful not to minimize the suffering or the fear of what the future may bring to those who must start again. They may not have lost each other, but that does not mean their loss is not profound. That stuff that is just stuff also provides a touchstone for a lifetime of memories.
Signs have been placed on the doors of the Expo Centre in Edmonton, telling media they are not allowed into the building that has been a temporary shelter to hundreds of Fort McMurray evacuees. Those signs are not there to keep away reporters on the search of a career-making scandal. No, they are more likely meant to keep away compassionate reporters, intent on sharing their compassion with the world. Sharing is good, but so is solitude and a quiet time to deal with a loss that words can barely describe.
Monday morning brought silence to that small Edmonton park. But if you listened and looked carefully, you would have seen a lone chickadee, that tough little survivor, searching a couple of unburned branches for food just as it had a day earlier. The future had already begun.
