Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. There is a fire right now, burning in the forest that I love the most.

The forest that held me as a child, the forest that introduced me to animacy, the forest where I first encountered the world of fairy.

The forest that grew in me awe and wonder and a deep sense of the possible.

That forest is burning.

The Hermit's Peak Calf Canyon fire in northern New Mexico, the largest fire in the

country as of today. Three hundred thousand plus acres, what was meant to be a controlled burn, which was

lit at a time in a drought, when there really is no such thing as a controlled burn anymore.

And there are those who speak of fires as being part of the

healthy life cycle of the forest, and in a healthy whole system they certainly can be. But this isn't

that. This isn't the healthy life cycle of the forest. It's something much more serious, much more

serious. This is part of the great wheel of consequence the planet is now facing, and we're here bearing witness to it firsthand. And I look out on the forest burning, and the streams and the watersheds now aflame, the mossy forest floor dried of precious water. I look out on the forest

burning, and I wish it could have been another way. I wish it could have been another way.

Some days I wish, as many wish these days, that we didn't have to bear witness to so much pain.

I wish it could have been another way.

The forest's whole and healthy, whole healthy forests, the waters pure and clear, the life cycle

of all that flowers spiraling as it should, unbroken beneath the sky of stars.

There are moments when I glimpse how it could have been.

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