Slowly moving on

The fire is finally out. Israel is burying its dead and beginning the hard work of rebuilding, both physically and emotionally, that comes with the day after.

After days glued to the television, the internet, the radio, Facebook, Twitter, anything and everything, I finally feel able to again turn to photography for solace, looking for beauty to replace the horrors seared into my consciousness.

I turned to the same simple flower that brought comfort to me once before and let it wash over me and fill my inner eye with yellows that were not flames, reds that don't burn. I'm one of the lucky ones. I don't live on the Carmel, a place that just a few days ago was one of the greenest, loveliest, most magical places in the country. A place I visited just a few weeks ago to drink in it's soothing green mountains and crisp clean air. A place where many families still make olive oil the way they have for untold generations. Today that village is bearing the hurt of an unspeakable burden, today those hills are blackened and dead, the gravesite of 42 souls lost to the flames, countless homes burned, and 5 million trees lost.

Someday though, the hills will begin to live again, and bring joy, tempered with sad remembrance, to all those who see them.

For now, there is this. This small piece of beauty. May it put a smile on the face of those who see it and wipe away a little of the horror of the past days.

Devastation

Northern Israel is still in the throes of the worst forest fire in our history. 41 people are dead, most of them prison service trainees heading in to evacuate a nearby prison who were burned to death when their bus was trapped by the fast moving fire. Over 12,000 acres of forests - 5.5 million trees - and several villages have burned and it isn't over yet. It is December already and yet the winter rains haven't yet arrived, unseasonably hot temperatures, hot dry winds, and no rain since last spring has turned the entire region into a giant tinderbox, and this is the tragic result.

The only bright spot, if you have to find one, is the way the international community has answered our desperate call for help, sending firefighting aircraft, fire retardants, and hundreds of firefighters of their own to stand hand in hand with ours to together beat this monster back.

Israelis, and I suspect most others, have always been better at banding together and supporting each other in a crisis than they are at actually getting along each day. If only we could all remember that feeling of love and trust in our fellow man and carry it forward long after the flames have been extinguished - that would be a legacy fit for those who paid the ultimate price and laid down their lives trying to save others.

Normally on the fourth night of Hannukah I would be busy photographing burning menorahs as the Hannukah lights twinkled on my table.

Somehow this year I just don't feel like it.