Beauty and Destruction

My computer kept crashing last night as I tried to post my Blip, so I will try this. This picture was taken near the crest of the Santiam Pass in the Cascade Mountains. We have been on the search for a new recliner, and finally found one in Bend, which is about 150 miles east of our home. So we had a little road trip.

This was the first time we had been east of Salem since the wildfires in September. We were blown away by the scope and magnitude of the destruction. There were miles, upon miles, upon miles of burned forests; thousands upon thousands of acres destroyed. Hundreds of burned homes, businesses, shops, barns, gone. Piles of twisted metal; rock or brick chimneys pointing their skeletal fingers to the sky. Burned cars and trucks, even a burned fire truck in Detroit. The town of Detroit was about 90% destroyed. There are thousands and thousands of burned logs stacked along the side of the road. The strangest thing was the whimsical nature of what burned and what remained in places. We saw places in once thick forests, where every tree was burned, yet the house survived. Other places where one house burned, yet another just a few feet away looked untouched.

This was a tragedy of immense magnitude. Thousands of people have been displaced. And this was only one fire scene in a West Coast that saw dozens and dozens of fires this year. I wanted to add several pictures I took as extras here, but my faulty old computer wouldn’t allow it.