Fire and Flood

19 Jan 2006, Corvallis, Oregon

Under a billowing black trail, the warehouse behind the mill is being eaten by red flames.

We watch from the park. The floodwater has climbed at least two feet since yesterday, and now benches and bike paths are part of the river. This wide and muddy Willamette bulges beneath the overpass, where cars go by, and roils under the mill. Under the smoke that pours skyward.

A few people with dogs and lattés in to-go cups gather to watch. Some pop open a digital camera, and try to make it into a picture: See the hungry flames, the dying mill, the surging water. As if the moment could be held against its will.

As if we will not all be destroyed in turn. As if the lesson is not being shouted by every log truck and new townhouse development: this world is eating itself.

I am crying, but I have to go to work. At the store, I dress in a shining silk mandarin jacket: metallic green armor for a morning in the retail realm. Mythology converges in sudden lucidity: we are always in witness to Kali the destroyer, birthing and eating her children; we are always attempting to ignore the self-consuming serpent, to face away from a world as terrifying and beautiful as a scorpion in the moonlight. To put something between ourself and flames that billow above a rushing flood.

The local paper reported this in their own way....