BURN: Editor’s NOTE
Photo by Jessica Hays
The wind is pushing against the trees, alternating between a cool, damp wind that smells of rain and a hot, dry air scraping across my forearms. Clouds billow and grow from ever darkening bases into towering pillars, appearing as benign as marshmallows but anyone from the West knows different. There is friction in those clouds and somewhere in their life, lightning will result.
And thus begins the summer dance across these Western states. We need the rain. Don’t want the lightning. Clouds water the dry earth. While the lightning hungers for spring flowers and grasses browning in the summer sun.
This yin/yang, plus/minus, pro/con is the heart of burn. There is heat. There is destruction. It can cleanse, it can cover in soot.
In our cover art and accompanying photo essay by Jessica Hays, we take in the power of a forest fire, those who fight it and the landscape left behind. Noah Davis and Sam Rappaport flee four walls seeking different avenues of escape from internal combustion. Our own Chloe Nostrant offers up a sensual list of ignition points. And Slayd Sasser casts for the flame his Grandfather has burned through a lifetime.
We will also offer the first of our “Curiosity” pieces with Erin Woodward’s Summer Reading list. And Liz Lynch brings the heat with a recipe for Green Chile Mountain Lion stew.
Make sure you are on the newsletter list as we have two serials coming this summer. One from Josh Tatman with an accompanying piece by Marissa Jensen that delves into summer storms and the tornadoes they spawn. And another from Mark Schoenfeld on a curious and interesting tale about a town in Montana and what they may or may not have burned……….
-kmw
