I grew up at the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range in Utah. The valley in which I lived was hedged on the north and east by towering peaks while on the west a lake and more mountains fenced us in. This scenic vista was very commonplace to us and rarely drew our attention.

During the summer of 1992, the mountains caught fire due to the careless antics of juveniles with fireworks. Day and night the fires blazed, turning the sun red, casting a dense smoke over the valley, and blanketing our cars with a thin film of ash. As the sun set and the valley darkened, the fires glowed on the crests of the hills creating a strange show of pyrotechnics.

My neighbors laid blankets on their roofs, set out lawn chairs on their grass, and watched the blazes. Typically we would only do this for the fireworks displays of July Fourth and Pioneer Day, but now we had a reason to look at our environment.

Note: My MFA thesis is housed on a zip disk. Since I haven’t had access to a zip drive for the last year and a half, I haven’t even peeked at my thesis since I handed it in. This is an excerpt from my thesis.