Poems by Samantha Smith

Precarious

by Samantha Smith

From Canary Fall 2022

Samantha grew up in the foothills of the Sierra near the Yuba River. Her current home in Colorado sits in a place of transitions where the vast plains to the East begin their dramatic rise into the Rockies and Clear Creek mellows from steep and wild to slow and meandering as it slowly cedes itself into a maze of irrigation ditches

On the day that Tahoe almost burned down, the sky here was hazy, dull, and lifeless. Monotonous grey suffocated the mountains so cruelly that even that eerie fire-season sun failed to make an appearance. On that day, I hadn’t planned to do much outside so I couldn’t complain about my ruined hiking or biking plans, and I felt lucky in a sense. I was far from tragedy without a home, or worse, a family under threat. And yet I couldn’t escape the heaviness.

That day was a hot one here in Golden, a small town on the west side of Denver and my adopted home of the past six years. We decided to settle here, mostly on a whim, after driving through a grand total of one time and deciding that it “felt right.” A little downtown surrounded by mountains, a river running through, proximity to the offerings of a larger city – what more could a semi-outdoorsy, semi-professional couple want?

And the town has not disappointed. It’s a place where work and stress are balanced by easy escapes into the mountains. Families meet up for playdates and coffee at the shaded park by the river. On warm weekends, you can watch your toddler gleefully zip around the pump track on a balance bike and then walk down the hill to the brewery (the one at the edge of town with the views and dog park, not the one near downtown where you always feel too old).

It’s undeniably a great place to live and I’m happy here. But it’s not home. Home is and always has been the Sierra Nevada. In the Sierra, thick layers of pine needles bake in the sun and release a perfect scent that summons both long summer days of free exploration and the impending constriction of fall. Wet oak leaves blanket the ground in winter, to eventually be pounded to a moist, nutrient-rich mush by the rains. Huge slabs of granite are carved smooth on the banks of rivers, creating perfect resting places of warmth – mini ovens to warm bodies chilled from swimming. There is nothing so smooth in the whole world as the skin of a madrone tree. Calling it bark almost feels disrespectful, but the playful curls, peeled away from the tree, simply crunch on the ground as you walk by. They don’t mind.

When the Caldor Fire encroached on South Lake Tahoe last summer, it seemed that it might be successful in destroying the crown jewel of resort towns in the Sierra. As many residents expressed shock – we never thought this would happen to Tahoe they kept saying – I sat in safety in Colorado, surrounded by orange haze and rising panic. Panic and confusion. Why was I so worried about Tahoe? I knew it as a beautiful resort town where I had played a few games of beach volleyball, skied a handful of times, and hung out off and on with an ex-boyfriend, but that was where the memories ended. It certainly wasn’t home.

That night, though, when the fire came dangerously close to breeching the lines and engulfing the town, I checked and re-checked the news, compulsively watched the fire trackers, as if my own home were directly in the path of this unstoppable wall of heat and fury. It wasn’t until I’d spent hours poring over news articles, google-mapping Tahoe National Forest, and generally fretting, that the truth beneath my unease finally emerged: if Tahoe went, anything could go. If Tahoe couldn’t be saved, with its multi-million-dollar vacation homes, fancy restaurants, ski resorts and golf courses, then the humble backwoods of my childhood were all but gone as well.

Out there. In my familiar corner of the Sierra, hippies and rednecks cross paths on dusty backroads and at hidden emerald pools of the Yuba River. The summer sky turns purple at dusk just as the air starts to cool. Blackberry brambles – their jealous spikes guarding a bounty of sun-warmed, juicy prizes – overtake clearings one season at a time, choking out all evidence of emptiness.

In my memory there is a meadow filled with tall yellow grasses, where seed pods glow in the morning sun as I make my way along the dirt path to school. In winter, ice crystals push up from the soil in the middle of the path, creating temporary crystal palaces that will soon melt back into mud. Odes to the brilliance and impermanence of nature. A field of scotch broom sits out back behind the old cabin, army green and cheerfully yellow in the spring. And of course, The Big Cedar Tree that welcomes me with open arms as I learn to climb.

When I was young, the 49er Fire blazed through the local mountains and canyons. My memories are few: hushed conversations, snippets of discussion at the gas station about evacuations, and the family that parked their RV in our driveway after their house had burned down. As a child I couldn’t understand the danger to human life or the impact on the land, but that fire became the Goliath of all fires to me. It was, I was sure, the fire to which all other fires in the future would be compared.

To the credit of my seven-year-old self, I pretty much got it right at the time. In 1988 the 49er Fire was recorded as the third most destructive in state history, burning slightly more than 30,000 acres. Yet a changing climate would ultimately prove me wrong. A little over a quarter-century later, that fire that traumatized the community and land that I called home doesn’t even make it onto the top 20 list anymore. In tragic contrast, the Dixie Fire last summer burned 963,309 acres, and California’s largest fire to date, the August Complex fire of 2020, burned more than a million acres.

The Caldor Fire (which burned a mere 221,835 acres) did not take out South Lake Tahoe that night after all, thanks to heroic firefighting and some lucky weather breaks. But that night my eyes were forced open to a reality that I had willfully ignored for so long: those wild and tender places that created me, so un-grand in comparison, were not even close to safe. After all, who would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to protect a perfect meadow, or a patch of weedy scotch broom, or even a tree so memorable that it stays with a little girl for a lifetime?

One day after I’d finished college my mom asked a question that she’d probably pondered for a while. “You probably won’t ever move back, will you?” Her voice caught as she said the words, like she was just having the realization that I was gone forever.

I’d grown up cradled by the mountains and forests, but with age I became restless and desperate to escape the imperfections of my small world. As soon as I could, I ran to the city where I discovered manicured lawns, tended hedges, flower beds managed with mowers and fertilizers, and a starless sky that glowed orange and purple. I also discovered excitement and opportunity and thought of moving back home, even to my beloved Sierra, was nowhere on my radar.

My answer came out too quickly, but I wasn’t surprised by it. “Uh no mom, I don’t think so,” I muttered eloquently. Didn’t she know? When I had left, I had left for good.

Now though, an adult woman with children of my own, I treasure that deep belonging and intimacy of place that I was so freely granted. The possibility of return comforts me, and the calming knowledge that I could be there again, anytime, is a balm to the anxieties of everyday life. With just a quick and simple plane flight, I could once again stand on that steady and solid ground, relinquish the bad and the good and the mundane of the years, let it seep from my bones back into earth that knows me so well.

Or so I have always thought.

It’s winter now, here in the Rockies. Snow covers the barren ground in a cold and serene blanket of protection. The fire next to me glows soft and warm, friendly. I relax into its cozy presence, but as it pops and hisses inside its iron cage, I am reminded of the inevitable: soon, spring will come to California, and then summer. That foreboding loss and longing that seeded itself in my chest last summer begins to reawaken.

Here, a thousand miles from home, I am overpowered by the scent of pine needles baking in the afternoon sun, the taste of dust-covered blackberries, and visions of glowing grasses in an oak-lined meadow where a young girl skips, carefree, towards home.