think.
So I thought about my feelings for Brian Thiel, and found them wanting. I was sorry he had died, of course, but in a distant, abstract way. What I was really feeling, more than any sense of grief or loss over Brian, was curiosity about B.J. Why was she so upset about this? She’d hung up the phone as soon as I agreed to come, saying she’d explain it all in person.
Well, I’d have the answers soon enough. I read the rest of the paper, just to pass the hour-long flight. The plane droned along above endless wooded slopes, and I didn’t glance up again until I heard another passenger’s voice.
“Look!”
We all looked. The limpid summer sky was empty of even the smallest cloud. But up ahead of us, huge and alarmingly solid-looking, towered an immense column of smoke. The crown was shaped like a giant cauliflower, the edges of its blinding white billows etched sharply against the sapphire blue. But down below, the column darkened to yellow-gray and smudgy brown.
Forest fire.
As we flew closer, I craned my head to peer down at the base of the column. It formed a dirty gray curtain that followed the rise and fall of the folded land, thinning to a mere veil in some spots, thick and opaque in others, hiding the trees as it consumed them. A ragged line of orange flame crept along one ridge, and helicopters drifted in and out of the smoke like fat black dragonflies.
From my window seat the silent spectacle was fascinating, even beautiful. But down there, in the searing heat and thunderous roar and stinging fumes, crews of people would be working harder than I’d ever worked in my life to try and tame the inferno. This wasn’t Brian’s fire, but his death made me look at it with new eyes.
And the sight of the fire certainly gave me a different perspective on Brian himself. So what if I remembered him as a childhood bully, or a swaggering adolescent? My cousin had been doing something brave and fine with his life, and now that life was over. Who was I to criticize him?
But moments of insight, however high-minded, are only moments. As the plane slanted toward Boise, the fir-covered mountains gave way to parched brown hills and irrigated river valleys, the smoke tower passed out of sight behind us, and I gazed eagerly down at my hometown.
Boise, Idaho, was once the reverse of Manhattan: a great place to live, but you wouldn’t especially want to visit there. These days, though, the city boasted better restaurants and bigger concerts and fancier lifts at the Bogus Basin ski area, only fifteen miles away. Best of all, at least to me, June in Boise looked exactly like June should, as burstingly green and blazingly bright as all the summers of my childhood.
There were changes each time I came home, a new building here, a rerouted street there. But the hills of the Boise Front still defended the north edge of town, tawny hills like the flanks of lions. And closer in, along the bike lanes of the Boise River Greenbelt and the quiet neighborhood streets, the fine old silver maples and prospector elms and broad-limbed sycamores would still be casting their pools of deep, warm, murmuring shade. I love Seattle, but it’s always nice to go home.
Not that I’d be in Boise all that long. Mom had offered to meet me at the airport, just to say hello, and we’d visit some more in Ketchum during the wedding weekend. I thought I might stay over in Boise for a few days afterward, too. Eddie didn’t need me to rush back, and the way Aaron was acting lately, it might be time to deprive him of my delightful company for a while. Maybe absence would make the guy grow fonder.
We landed with a bump and a whine in the bare, empty stretch of land south of Boise. Seattle doesn’t have a bare empty inch. As the seat-belt sign blinked off, I checked my watch: four-thirty. Plenty of time to drive to Ketchum, pick B.J. up at work, and take her out for dinner and drinks. Dinner optional.
The covered jetway was air-conditioned, but just
So I thought about my feelings for Brian Thiel, and found them wanting. I was sorry he had died, of course, but in a distant, abstract way. What I was really feeling, more than any sense of grief or loss over Brian, was curiosity about B.J. Why was she so upset about this? She’d hung up the phone as soon as I agreed to come, saying she’d explain it all in person.
Well, I’d have the answers soon enough. I read the rest of the paper, just to pass the hour-long flight. The plane droned along above endless wooded slopes, and I didn’t glance up again until I heard another passenger’s voice.
“Look!”
We all looked. The limpid summer sky was empty of even the smallest cloud. But up ahead of us, huge and alarmingly solid-looking, towered an immense column of smoke. The crown was shaped like a giant cauliflower, the edges of its blinding white billows etched sharply against the sapphire blue. But down below, the column darkened to yellow-gray and smudgy brown.
Forest fire.
As we flew closer, I craned my head to peer down at the base of the column. It formed a dirty gray curtain that followed the rise and fall of the folded land, thinning to a mere veil in some spots, thick and opaque in others, hiding the trees as it consumed them. A ragged line of orange flame crept along one ridge, and helicopters drifted in and out of the smoke like fat black dragonflies.
From my window seat the silent spectacle was fascinating, even beautiful. But down there, in the searing heat and thunderous roar and stinging fumes, crews of people would be working harder than I’d ever worked in my life to try and tame the inferno. This wasn’t Brian’s fire, but his death made me look at it with new eyes.
And the sight of the fire certainly gave me a different perspective on Brian himself. So what if I remembered him as a childhood bully, or a swaggering adolescent? My cousin had been doing something brave and fine with his life, and now that life was over. Who was I to criticize him?
But moments of insight, however high-minded, are only moments. As the plane slanted toward Boise, the fir-covered mountains gave way to parched brown hills and irrigated river valleys, the smoke tower passed out of sight behind us, and I gazed eagerly down at my hometown.
Boise, Idaho, was once the reverse of Manhattan: a great place to live, but you wouldn’t especially want to visit there. These days, though, the city boasted better restaurants and bigger concerts and fancier lifts at the Bogus Basin ski area, only fifteen miles away. Best of all, at least to me, June in Boise looked exactly like June should, as burstingly green and blazingly bright as all the summers of my childhood.
There were changes each time I came home, a new building here, a rerouted street there. But the hills of the Boise Front still defended the north edge of town, tawny hills like the flanks of lions. And closer in, along the bike lanes of the Boise River Greenbelt and the quiet neighborhood streets, the fine old silver maples and prospector elms and broad-limbed sycamores would still be casting their pools of deep, warm, murmuring shade. I love Seattle, but it’s always nice to go home.
Not that I’d be in Boise all that long. Mom had offered to meet me at the airport, just to say hello, and we’d visit some more in Ketchum during the wedding weekend. I thought I might stay over in Boise for a few days afterward, too. Eddie didn’t need me to rush back, and the way Aaron was acting lately, it might be time to deprive him of my delightful company for a while. Maybe absence would make the guy grow fonder.
We landed with a bump and a whine in the bare, empty stretch of land south of Boise. Seattle doesn’t have a bare empty inch. As the seat-belt sign blinked off, I checked my watch: four-thirty. Plenty of time to drive to Ketchum, pick B.J. up at work, and take her out for dinner and drinks. Dinner optional.
The covered jetway was air-conditioned, but just