The drive home follows a river in the mountains. I know the road well. The small towns with names like Mill City, the fishing holes, the big lake where, as a kid, I whipped around on innertubes, the hot rubber burning my stomach. Back then the forest was so dense that it arched over the road, forming a green tunnel that blocked out the sun.
Today the sun shimmers on the river, the road, and the blackened tree trunks. The burnt trees rise up each hill, in every direction, as I drive. After the last embers cooled, loggers cleared away 50 feet of trees on both sides of the road for 35 miles. The wood is still marketable and removing it makes the road safer, they say. I can hear their chainsaws’ metallic teeth chewing and spitting in the distance.
I drive out of the mountains down into a wet valley dotted with towns and farms. The first exit leads to a prison and I take it. When the fire came they had to evacuate the inmates in school buses. I pull over to stretch and I spot a murmuration of swallows over the prison yard. I see hundreds of them turning together.
Underneath the birds, men play basketball and sit at tables. I can see a man in the corner of the yard with one hand in the air to block the sun. He follows the twists and turns of the birds with his other hand, an open palm raised towards the sky. I put my hand out too, fingers spread wide. The birds stream between the gaps in my fingers, disappearing and then reappearing. We weave together–I the warp, and they, the weft. I try to see our creation, but their bodies shrink into the horizon. A burst of wingbeat swelling. A world made for them.
Will Matsuda