BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 69

AUGUST 1980

DAVID AND KALI

I imagine it was love, if indeed love is an actual thing. I'm undecided about that. Certainly the word describes a particular constellation of feelings, an enlivening of all senses.

Time possessed a high viscosity, akin to molten lava's, before Kali arrived that day on the Butte. Afterward, it became oxygen and I moved through it freely. Though I knew she might not be back for days, anticipation energized me, propelled me into an unaccustomed sense of being.

Anticipation—it comes in as many forms as those who experience it. It is suffering.

The Eastern religions relieve suffering through absence—removing its causes outside and in. Subtraction. Western counterparts instead seek that suffering, embrace it. Their methods intend to expand the self, not eliminate it, to add and not subtract, to exert the soul and thus overcome pain—through love: love of God, love of fellow man, love of animals, but for most part-time practitioners, love of the beloved, a romantic love. If I was not in love with Kali, I was at least in love with that love, love itself. It altered my existence. I felt as I had never felt. Love took me to where I'd never been. Intoxication and music took me near that place, offered close glimpses of a similar state, but love took me beyond them. Much further beyond them.

For me anticipation had always been a willful act. I drew the future nearer with my hunger or pushed it away with my dread and denial. From my perch on the Big Southern, once I met Kali, anticipation became something else. I looked forward to our future meetings, but I also basked in the present moment. And, I ached in the distance between the two, in what I imagine to be a state akin to agape, the love of God—which I had never experienced, not believing in God.

The feeling flooded out of me and into me, would have been evident to an observer comparing a prior David to the current version. Dour or listless before, now I exuded cheer—in a muted form when compared to a child's or that of someone in mania, but still cheer. Hearing visitors come I looked forward to their appearance, though never with the verve I experienced when I heard a motorcycle's engine.

The first major mid-summer storm, about a month after Kali's appearance, was mostly dry lightning with little rain. It started numerous small fires, one transforming into a major event to the west, outside my area of responsibility though within my attention. When fire suppression vehicles can drive to a lightning strike they easily quell the consequent fire, but when lightning lands in a remote area with inaccessible terrain, air support is needed. Even air support may be impossible to call in if slopes are too steep, so ground firefighters must surmount the blaze—it's difficult and dangerous work. This fire started in such a place, one with little burnable material but one which allowed threads of flame to trickle out between rocky areas. Those minor runnels of fire became hydra-like, too numerous to extinguish, with even a minor gust of wind or twister pushing them. Some of those stray channels reached open territory. A strong wind then fanned small flames toward broad, accessible areas that were filled with volatile cedar, sage and cheatgrass. The separate fires burned so fast that air power helped little.

Early July saw days of high winds that spread the fire rapidly into the Sun Valley area, then a long spell of calm that held the smoke in the valley. The smoke, when the wind blew, reached nearly eighty miles away to Blackfoot. You could smell it at night in the city, Kali told me, and by the time she got to the Big Butte turnoff the bank of smoke completely occluded all vistas—the mountain ranges disappeared. On the Butte, though we sat above that pillow of smoke, I was unable to aid fire-fighting efforts, only southward allowing any clear scope.

Breathing came easier at the high altitude, Kali said, and she took to spending nights. We spent some inside and some under the stars.

That fire, after a three day rain that greatly aided the fight against it, was out by the first of August, save the cleanup of hot spots. That entailed putting out smoldering stumps that even a light wind might excite and reignite a bigger blaze. The task was not as urgent as full-fledged firefighting but was an important, if less stressful, aspect of the job.

The excitement of Kali's frequent presence and the adrenaline of the extensive fire combined. I felt myself expanding to include the entire surrounding plain. I was big. Full. I was in love.

And I loved it.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston