Dear Friends,
Turner Zion United is a community of faith within New Denver-Silverton, in BC’s Slocan Valley. Currently surrounded by wildfires and navigating evacuation alerts and orders, this community continues to be a faithful source of support, care, and innovation in their town and neighbourhood.
Executive Minister Treena Duncan has dedicated a fund to support Turner Zion United’s efforts and presence in a community hard hit by wildfire. As you are able, donations of any amount to the “Wildfire Relief Turner Zion United in New Denver” fund can be made via the region’s Canada Helps portal: www.CanadaHelps.org/en/dn/43314.
With permission to share, please see the following letter from The Rev. Dr. Therese DesCamp detailing some of what the community’s life is like at present.
August 1, 2024
Hello, dear ones. I promised some updates, but to so many people that I can’t keep up. So please forgive the impersonal nature of this letter.
There are blue skies today, at least some of the sky. (Although our air quality index is still wicked.) Late Tuesday afternoon, New Denver taken off evacuation alert, while the village of Silverton, 5 km south of us, was taken off evacuation order. There was general rejoicing and streaming eagerly home. The fire just a few kilometres north of us was declared “under control,” and although dozens of fires are visible all around the lake, we are deemed safe enough.
But down the lake on Red Mountain Road, people are still out of their homes, and it will be two weeks or so until they can return. Those fires are still “out of control.” Sections of electrical infrastructure have been destroyed, and trees and rocks bar the highway. It will take a good deal of work to get all this back in place. Meanwhile, people’s animals shift for themselves because residents are allowed only occasional trips back in, to water gardens and feed livestock. The large chicken operation that supplied the grocery store lost every one of their birds. Many freezers full of food are now waste because power has been out for over a week. Some homesteads formerly treed with old growth are down to bare rock, although rumour has it that only one house has been lost.
There are a lot of broken hearts.
I worked the dinner shift Tuesday night at the aptly named Fireweed Hub (our internet café), helping prepare and serve dinner to the 60 or so firefighters in town. They’d already pulled a crew or two out, moving them to work on the fires at the bottom of the lake. As of this morning, we have only a small crew staying in the area. So after all the work getting contracts in place, sorting out who was doing the cooking, dealing with rosters of volunteers, etc., the little internet café is slowing down again. The plan as of today—aided by church funds—is to keep it open from 10-2 every day, at least until the evacuees from the Red Mountain Road area can go home, and then maybe slow down to a couple of times a week. This means one staff person, plus volunteers, who will serve coffee and tea, the goodies baked by the community, and provide some kind of lunch. This is all by donation or free if you need it; we won’t be charging people who are homeless and receiving only $22 per day for food.
So we have reached the chronic, as opposed to acute, stage of the forest fire saga. It’s much less glamorous and a lot more difficult, the slow slog after the intense push. Personalities rise to the surface, people get their feelings hurt, old animosities rear their heads.
I know this all sounds hard. But there is another story, one that shimmers in the background, never obscured, like a scent or a taste that lingers so vividly that you’re not sure if it’s really there or if you’re just remembering it. That story includes a series of free community dinners starting with tomorrow night’s “Leftovers Feast” where we’ll finish off whatever the firefighters didn’t eat. That story includes an outpouring of muffins and cakes and meatballs and gluten-free meals individually prepared by a fellow celiac. That story includes firefighters and dishwashers and loggers and servers and greeters and the ten folks that gathered last night for meditation. That story includes the many of you who have sent prayers and cheques. That story includes the short note I got last week from a longtime friend, a note that pierced my haze and made me cry. That story includes the hug, the look, the touch, the offer of help, the cup of coffee, the diligently washed dishes, the remarkable calm and generosity of the two women running food services.
I don’t know what we are witnessing here, in our environment. I remind myself that witnessing isn’t about the future, but the present. So I try not to worry about what’s next. But here in the present, the weather is erratic. It alternates between hot/dry and wet/cold, which doesn’t work well for this inland rainforest—or any other place in the world. Some new stability may not come for eons. I could complain, or be fearful (and I’ll probably do both). But witnessing to the world, as it is, seems like the work. And as I witness, to lay back in the arms of the Beloved and trust. Trust doesn’t mean that I expect all will get fixed the way I’d like it, but that all is held in the Infinite Love. Regardless of what the future holds.
I am remembering a conversation last week, on the day that the park caught fire. Two friends, both wilderness hikers, were horror-struck as we watched, overwhelmed by the probable loss of the back country places they loved. It hit me that we need to learn to love not just the green glade, but the bare rock, the fallen trees, the ashy ground. These too need respect and an open heart (as do the crazy neighbour, the competitive do-gooder, and our overwhelmed selves).
I am holding onto the fact that it is in the ashy ground that fireweed grows—beautiful, edible, and assembler of nutrients for the trees that will come in a few years. Fireweed is also the most delicate honey I have ever tasted, which seems fitting. Fireweed is the beauty that arises because of destruction; and yep, that is what is happening here. Thanks be to God.
Photos of Fireweed Hub and Slocan fire smoke (G. Meier).