Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to stay. She went to the kitchen, where she’d spent many hours as a guest cook, and collected the recipe box and binders containing the lineage of Tassajara’s kitchen to be taken to Jamesburg. That afternoon, the regular evening service at five forty-five in the zendo , often not fully attended, was packed. “Everyone was in there,” she recalled. “Suddenly we all needed to show up to the one thing that was still known amid all that was so uncertain.”

    After supper there was yet another meeting, this time in the creekside guest dining room. The tables inside were set for the next meal, the napkin table outside sprinkled with a fine sifting of ash.
    From her seat, Jane could see the bloodred orb of the sun, orange shadows on the hillsides. She listened as residents started to discuss the schedule. Should they alter the usual summer routine, a student asked, maintaining morning and evening meditation, doing fire preparations during the working hours, when people would normally be at their regular crew jobs? But there were problems with that approach, another resident pointed out. Every crew’s schedule was slightly different. Some crews worked three days on, one day off. Some worked four days on, one off. Would they still have days off?
    Jane had been keeping a quiet profile, making suggestions gently to David or other senior staff members and only when her opinion was requested. But listening to this discussion, she realized she had to speak up. This fire just might find Tassajara unprotected and empty by default, she feared, if they didn’t stop talking and get to work.
    She’d stopped by the office earlier and asked for a sheet of paper—a whole sheet, not one of the recycled quarters from a cut-up page, used for messages—to start a list of everything they needed to do. They needed to dig fireline, removing even roots from cleared bands of earth. They needed to get crews organized, trim overhanging branches, clear brush, and rake leaves. Anything that might be extra flammable had to be moved to where it could not catch a building on fire. You can’t know what is the thing that will make a difference, she told them, you just do everything you can think to do.
    â€œWhat about the zendo schedule?” a resident asked. “What about zazen?”
    â€œThis is a work sesshin,” said Jane. “It’s not not practice.”
    â€œFire sesshin , ” someone added, and the mood in the room shifted. They decided they would work earlier in the mornings and later into the evenings, when it was cooler and less smoky. They would begin right then, at eight o’clock in the evening. Those who were able and wanted to would work. The zazen schedule would continue but would be optional.
    With the day’s last light, they hiked up to the hill cabins above the work circle to start clearing. The guest cook who’d gathered up the recipes cleared oak leaves from around cabins with a small brush. Of this experience, she wrote in her journal, “I couldn’t tell if we were preparing Tassajara for its death or its rebirth.” For the next thirty-six hours, the community worked together removing fuels, limbing trees, and digging fireline around the perimeter of Tassajara. They started at five thirty a.m. and continued until darkness fell, taking individual breaks as needed and meeting several times a day for work circle or a meal in the guest dining room. They worked mostly in silence, but occasionally someone started singing or told a story for respite from the heat, smoke, mosquito bites, poison oak, and blisters. At the end of the day, they washed away the sweat and grime and weariness at the baths and walked back to their cabins in darkness—the flammable kerosene lanterns had been removed from the paths.
    The feeling of shared presence that normally abides in the zendo had drifted outdoors, to all of Tassajara. But even as they relished the