When the wildfires came to my house, I remembered the garden of Eden

Lush. That’s the word for Oregon, my Oregon, the Oregon of my childhood memories, where my ancestors came to farm and mill wheat into flour, to keep shop and raise children in the small towns of the Willamette Valley. Lush, Edenic forests. Lush ferns in shaded glens. Lush blackberries, with vines ready to scratch an unsuspecting berry picker, with fruit to stain her fingers and tongue a juicy purple. Lush rivers and creeks and ponds. Lush rain drifting or drizzling or sheeting or even bucketing down from the heavens to cover the familiar earth. A garden, with every shade of green ever named and a good many not.

We’re famous for rain here, and we have a self-deprecating humor about all things wet. Oregonians don’t tan; they rust, you’ll hear. Or Last year, thousands of Oregonians saw a UFO: the sun. We allow tourists to think that real Oregonians don’t carry umbrellas. Good luck using moss to find your way out of a forest here, we say, because moss doesn’t grow on the north sides of trees—it grows on all sides of the trees. Also on roofs, mailboxes, fences, and bicycles left too long in the yard.

Lush. That’s not the word for the Oregon I live in now, where fire devours the lush and spits out the leftovers.