Healing I: the story of the barn fire

I titled my first post in 2010 knowing that the devastating fire was not only an ending, but also a beginning. It is the cycle of Life, is it not? There is no death, merely a transformation or transition. Resurrection, of sorts, follows death. Vegetation disintegrates into the earth that it feeds, becomes. Every tragedy triggers a change.


  Friday, July 9, 2010  began with the continuation of a thunderstorm  with light and sound effects of a war zone.  I  had taken cover after midnight, pulling the curtains against the flashes of light and trying to ignore the cracks and rumbles.  I drifted off after a particularly close jolt only to be awakened by shouting and pounding on the door. I made out the words,  "Your barn is on fire,” as I stumbled to the door; reflections of red moved through spaces in the closed curtains. I opened the door to the full silhouette of the barn set against  orange and yellow flames shooting outward toward the house and trees.

The neighbor had called the fire department. The heat and flames left me impotent. I  stood crying, “My babies, my babies.”  I had only an hour before closed the tack room door  to protect the two kitties inside from coyotes. Although my Arabian mare was not fastened in the barn, I neither saw nor heard her. I asked another neighbor to check the barn lot in hopes she had escaped the small corral enclosure where the flames clearly illuminated the open space.  Later I was to find in that space a puddle of rubbery color where a ball had melted.

I see the barn and the flames to this day. I know the firemen came quickly ,some neighbors and my sister-in-law. I  remember thinking, “ It's still lightning and I never stand outside in lightning.” Rod put a jacket around me and a hat on my head against the rain. Except for the explosions of aerosol paint cans and cat food cans,  I remember only silence although it must have been very noisy.

The large metal barn was reduced to a few charred poles and  a metal roof draping from them like heavy gray fabric.  Starr’s body lay beside the barn where we believe the lightning that began the fire struck her directly.  The bodies of the kitties were found on the second return of the firemen to dampen the smoldering remains of the tack room.

Once the dangling  roof metal  and  precarious poles were removed, I spent hours walking through the oily blackened space. Black sticky soot on every surface; acrid stench and irritation of ashes; and a gut-wrenching grief and helplessness—all limited my wandering ,digging  and raking to multiple forays of short duration.  Sometimes I would  merely stand, trying to remember what had been in this space or that corner. Sometimes I would cry or talk to Starr, Sophie, and Hildy—all buried nearby.

As I sorted through the stinky, soggy mess trying to make a list of losses, I often confronted mysteries.  Much of what had been there was gone: ash and vapor.  Missing halters could be counted by the multitude of buckles; bolts, latches and melted rubber mats marked where stalls had stood. An English saddle was reduced to two stirrups and a thin metal strip outlining  the seat form;  one concho and  girth rings were the yield of a western saddle. Melting metal, metal-glass fusion turned recognized functional materials into imagination-inspiring shapes and surprising juxtapositions.

 a moon and wolf enameled copper switch plate after the fire

 some of the saved remains after washing

 Pieces sealed after washing

 one of my cherished keepsakes--a CocaCola bottle opener

Found in cleaning: the name of my horse was Starr....

As I sorted and sifted, I grieved and I saved.  I knew these assorted objects would become pieces of art.  I did not think in terms of catharsis or healing—though  art can function as both.  My first painting after the fire (found in my first post of this blog) embodied my feelings. The Hindu goddess Kali, like the phoenix and other familiar symbols, carries the duality of destruction and re-creation, death and rebirth.  As humans we can seek to place blame for our tragedies, our hardships, our pains; or we can seek to find meaning, purpose, the “silver lining.”

Thanks to Nancy Stark's "Thinking About the Box" at the Bower Center this spring 2013, where I learned techniques of attaching my findings. Below is the first of my assemblage art from the barn fire; it was almost completed in Stark's class.

 A Way of Life  assemblage, 12"x12"

 view from bottom

view from side