Magpie 64 — mountain fire

"Smoldering Fires",
Clarence Holbrook Carter,
1904-2000 Columbus Museum of Art

The Fire that Burned the Mountain

     Not a tree remained on Mount Elias in central Ecuador. There was no grass for the goats who had been brought down before the fire started. The goats who hadn’t come down were, of course, dead.

     The mountain was dead, thought the people in the village of Elias del Monte. Those who had goats to sell would go to the city, sell them, and start again in a different village. Those left in Elias del Monte would die, they thought, and their children with them.

     Little did they know that an area razed by forest fires could regenerate with the first spring rains. Before the stores of food had run out in the village, the new green grass began to grow. The remaining goats, who had been foraging for garbage in the streets, had bright new pasture in which to grow and multiply.

     The mountain wasn’t dead after all, realized the people who had stayed in Elias del Monte. The miracle of regeneration had occurred for the first time in the memory of the villagers, and they realized it was good.

Posted for  Magpie Tales,  hosted every week

by the lovely Tess at Willow Manor, who posts a picture for us to use as inspiration. Thanks, Tess!

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