The karma of our time and our place

When the wet and chilly winds pummel the northwest through the winter months I find myself longing for the sun and the blessed balm of heat on my shoulders. That is when my thoughts turn longingly to the desert warmth of the southwest. The desert air is a balm, especially in February or March. Not yet hot, but clear and agreeably warm in the daylight hours, if not at night. I like it. It's a refreshing change. I can fly to Palm Springs from Vancouver in less than three hours. Nice.

So, as I watched CNN last evening I was distressed to see footage of all the wildfires in that area. Flames licking up the canyons and gulches and cinderizing the desert foliage. Watching the firefighters attempting to thwart runaway blazes with daytime temperatures of 105 F, and then the flames on top of that, I was dazzled at their dedication, and offer my intense gratitude for their attempts to challenge nature at its nastiest, and even succeeding in some cases.

I watched a village just out past Yucca Valley burn to cinders and I thought I was there just a few months ago, on a day jaunt to astonishingly beautiful Joshua Tree National Park (pictured here), and now it was all flames and dense smoke and a heat that would bring most of us to our knees in despair over the losses.

It's an odd, slightly surreal feeling to see an image of a place where one has been. Where one has stood in one's particular moment in time at that place, and then to marvel at a traumatic moment in time where all had turned to hell.

I was first struck by this a number of years ago as I watched TV footage of religious rioting and bloodshed in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There was footage of the main bus station in Belfast in sheets of flame brought about by an IRA bomb. I had been there just a few years earlier. I had caught a bus from there. It was very peaceful at the time.

In another instance, I looked at footage of oozing lava from Mt. Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island, as it followed its unstoppable course into the headquarters and tourist centre of Volcano National Park and as it met the building, all erupted into cataclysmic flame, and I thought how I had picked up tourist brochures in that same building, looked at exhibits and carried out all the mundane tasks of any visitor, not realizing that in a few years this would all be gone.

So, I then, and quite naturally wonder about the people who visited the World Trade Centre on 9/11 and how they happened to be there on that most horrible of days. I have a friend who was in NYC on that day. She was there as a tourist while her husband was at a medical conference. She booked a couple of tours, as people do, and she had booked the Trade Centre for 9/11. She was contacted by the tourism operator, however, who informed her there had been a glitch, and could she take an alternate tour that day, and plan for the Towers the next day. She agreed, with very little thought about the matter.

Then, Hell happened.

My friend has often wondered why she was spared, and she has moments in which she feels, aside from overwhelming gratitude to whatever was watching over her, an odd sort of guilt as to why her karma led her elsewhere that day. She also feels guilt about those whose plans all fell into place.

I thought a bit about that as I watched the flames of the wildfires and the footage of people fleeing the communities of the torrid valley.