I drove through Bastrop today, on my way to teach @ KR Training.

It’s the first time I’ve been to the area since the massive wildfires.

It was… shocking. The devastation was vast. What was once thick, dense, lush, evergreen… it’s now just lots of charred black sticks and scorched earth.

It’d be odd too. You’d see one building burned to the ground, all the trees and ground burned, then another building seemingly totally unharmed. Just the way things happened, the way the wind blew, whatever. Can’t explain it, but that’s how it was.

At the south end of TX-21 just past the entrance to Bastrop State Park, I saw stacks of fenceposts on the side of the road? Huh? But then I kept driving… and saw all the guardrails lying on the ground… their posts were wood, burned by the fire. Work crews everywhere, clearing burned trees, trying to repair the guardrails.

I got to speak to someone who lost their home. She told me how her whole neighborhood is gone. Think about that. Consider your neighborhood… now think about all of it being gone. Just… like… that.

 

It’s going to take years, decades perhaps, for Bastrop to “return to normal”. Will it even? Who knows what it will become. But the funny thing about fire… if you set aside the devastation, you have to remember that fire does bring rebirth… it’s the Earth’s way of clearing and starting anew. You could see people coming together, people helping, people doing whatever it takes to start over. The land will be reborn, the people will too.