Grace Under Fire

   The first year of law school was a turbulent time for me and a likely topic of later blog posts. When I went to law school I was confident that I could overcome the challenges of higher education. After all, I had matured since college. I was better able to organize and schedule my time and better suited to handle stress, test anxiety and my own emotions. I knew that I could succeed or even flourish in an academic environment.

   Unfortunately, life often throws us additional unforeseen obstacles. I was told that law school was like running a marathon and I was expecting that there would be hurdles. But instead I found myself facing a long-jump over a moat filled with live alligators.

  What I took away from that high-stress environment was chronic illness, a big fluffy "migraine-buddy," and a complete inability to deal with problems. I couldn't face nominal stress without melting into a hyper-tense wreck of overwhelmed anxiety.  Everything set me off; telemarketers, bills, even accidentally dropping and shattering a dish also shattered my calm. It was like I had become one extremely sensitive, raw nerve with a pulse rate ratcheted up past schizophrenic squirrel. I lacked any ability to cope-- I was completely out of cope-- "cope-less."

   At first I tried my usual approach, which was engage head-on with stressful situations, laugh off the worst, and try to wrangle a solution from the fray. But bullishly charging at problems left me feeling exhausted and drained. I was tired to the point of agony. Struggling just seemed to bring more misery, and indeed it did because anxiety contributes to migraines as a trigger.

   I seemed to have become hyper-sensitive to stress. I could not understand it, but I came to realize that even fictional television violence set off a compulsive desire to flee. I found myself inevitably pacing to the kitchen "for a glass or water" or making sudden bathroom visits in the midst of scenes depicting crime, cruelty and death. I just couldn't set still during violent scenes and I felt restless until I had distanced myself from the television. It seemed silly at first, what a funny coincidence! But it happened consistently and I realized one day, months after I had returned home, that fleeing TV violence had become a deeply ingrained habit. But it wasn't just the TV.

   Where once I had tried to face down problems with dauntless tenacity I now found myself side-stepping issues or burying my head in the sand. It cannot be coincidence that I actually dreamed that I dug a hole in a sand-dune and buried myself in the sand to take a nap, hidden where no one would find me. Instead of handling problems I was shutting down.

   Of course I knew this wasn't a healthy pattern. I was letting too many things slide until the last possible moment. I made resolutions to overcome this tendency. But making resolutions alone is not enough to make a change or everyone would lose the 10 lbs at New Year. Sometimes it requires inspiration-- having a friend succeed in their fitness goals and sometimes it requires a tragedy-- like a friend dealing with heart disease.

   In my case, it required an "Act of God."

   On June 26th, 2012 a few dark clouds rolled over Boulder. The clouds seemed to promise rain after weeks of dry, hot weather that left plants parched and birds panting in the shade. It did rain momentarily, but there was also lightning. Fifty lightning strikes struck along the ridge above Boulder, and then, as if that wasn't enough, another one struck for fifty-one recorded strikes. One of the strikes sparked a wildfire that swiftly became an inferno. A column of smoke boiled out from the ridge eastward across the plains. Flames rushed toward homes and federal facilities for weather monitoring. With two massive fires at High Park and Wald Canyon already raging in Colorado, a devastating fire at Flagstaff seemed inevitable.
   I knew the Flagstaff area of forest well, it was not a mile from my favorite mountain retreat. Not many areas around Boulder haven't burned-- in the past two decades there have been many wildfires within just a few miles of city center. Moreover, few areas of Boulder park land are so pristine-- I'd seen flocks of wild turkeys as arrogant as dinosaurs and deer grazing mildly within yards of hikers. There was a beautiful, unsettled valley between the burning ridge and Flagstaff road full of majestic pines and golden Aspen. It hurt to know that a single shift of the wind could wipe it out. 

   Stress was not just palpable, it was a looming wave that crashed from the ridge above the city and drowned out reason. A tight expression pinched the faces of residents as the winds wove bitter smoke across the city. Sirens wailed up the canyons and slurry bombers lumbered overhead. My body felt as if I had crossed two live wires-- something I had accidentally done just weeks before. I was pacing and tense. If I'd been a cat all my fur would have been frizzed.
   My friend called to make sure I was not in danger. Not in personal danger, no, but heartbroken at the prospect of obliterating destruction. She urged me to look on the bright side.

   Silver lining? In all of this? I scoffed at the idea as my stomach heaved a flop of dread. But then my spine went rigid with concentration. What if, instead of just preparing for the worst-- what if I actively prepared for the best as well?

   I started following the news directly from the local organizations Tweets, gleaning for any indication one way or the other. I looked for setbacks but I also searched for progress. I pondered what I would do if the worst happened and considered what to do if the best happened. How to help, how to rebuild, how to mourn, how to rejoice, and how to survive. I was trying to look at the world in a balanced manner.

   It was not something that I was not used to doing. There is a tendency, especially in the trained "scientific" mind, to use logic and reason to calculate odds, to look for possible errors or problems, to come up with practical solutions, but not for "frivolous" things like optimism. But, aside from experiments, where hoping for an outcome might color results by polluting the process, why not "hope?" Why use all the powers of logic and deduction to examine only worst case scenarios? Why should a "realistic" outlook loom near to gloominess? Why not use reasoning to examine events from a balanced view? Why was there this tendency for "logic" to calculate only the negative under the pretense of pragmatism? Shouldn't a "realistic" examination of possibilities include both the best and worst scenarios and all possibilities in-between? This was not like a diagnostic test listing symptoms of liver failure-- almost anything was possible.

   As I followed the news via Tweets, I rejoiced at messages reporting that rain and hail had slowed the burn to a smolder, but I kept an eye on how many acres had been consumed. I woke up pleasantly surprised that the acreage of the blaze had dropped by 70 acres, but I noted that increasing heat and high winds might cause trouble. I was pleased to hear that the federal team had stepped in, but I read that the steep terrain made it difficult for ground crews to work.

   I kept abreast of developments in the situation instead of shutting down and shutting it out. No, I was not back to my old method of dealing. I wasn't pushing forward boldly examining the worst of it and using dry, dark humor as an emergency crutch to hobble over insurmountable odds to prevent shutting down. Instead, I was examining the best and worst of the situation and trying to keep a level head.

   Not in my wildest pragmatic dreams would I have considered that it would rain so much. For months prior the weather pattern had been hot and dry with clouds that brought nothing but disappointment. The weather forecast for that week had predicted a blistering 99 degrees and no rain. Instead, gully-washers and toad-stranglers drenched the drought-parched earth each afternoon for four days.  The rain didn't put out the fire, but it slowed the fire down to smolder instead of a racing blaze. The fire wasn't gaining ground quickly when the ground was soaked. This gave air crews and ground crews time to coordinate, to set back-burns, and to contain the blaze.  Never in my "realistic" world view would I have thought that the rainstorms would soon after spread to continuous massive thunderstorms that brought rain to the entire Rocky Mountains and that within a week all three fires would be contained.

    Pragmatic minds recognize patterns and play the odds based on those patterns-- not sudden, miraculously improbable changes. Optimistic minds believe the best is always possible but fail to plan for the worst. The often criticized rose-colored glasses of optimism are indeed one-sided, but so are the deep blues of pessimism. Using only one or the other you are likely to end up partially blinded and blind-sided. But as any child of the 80s knows, a balanced combination between red and blue makes 3D glasses and those allow you to see everything with increased depth-- totally radical.