Fire Monks

by Colleen Morton Busch

  Nearly two years after the fire, the mountains around Tassajara were felted green. But David still remembered how they’d looked just burned, down to bare earth. It was as if he could finally really see them. “It was so beautiful, the way that a dying person can be,” he told me. “The mountains in this form expressed a profound teaching for me: When everything extra is burned away, what’s truly essential in our lives is exposed in all its beauty and defenselessness.” What’s truly essential cannot be defended. Vulnerability is the only solid ground beneath one’s feet.

  AFTERWORD

  In May 2010, I walk up Tassajara Road with Abbot Steve and David, noting the contrast between the evidence of burn and the fierce display of new growth. Hillsides studded with blackened trunks have filled in with grasses and chaparral. Whorled lupine, morning glories, and hummingbird sage bloom profusely in the carbon-rich soil.

  David takes short, quick steps on my right, while Abbot Steve strides long-legged on my left. For awhile, we talk about the fire—David tells me that a new district ranger visited a few weeks back, interested in cultivating a relationship with Tassajara, that she and Mako had discovered that both of their mothers are Japanese. But then our conversation drifts, widens. I don’t have a recorder, a notebook, or a list of questions. I simply enjoy their company as we move together up the road.

  Telling the story of the fire, I came to know Tassajara and its residents in a way I hadn’t before. Different people told me different stories. Some called into question the trustworthiness of telling stories at all. Memories shift, expand, and fade. A narrative is always in flux. Meaning exists only in relationship—to the storyteller, the listeners, the moment within which the story is told.

  During the book’s writing, I went through my own fire of sorts—or rather, the fire I’d waited for finally arrived. In 2006, my husband had been diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer called multiple myeloma, in an early, slow-growing, “smoldering” stage. For three years, we monitored his disease, watching for signs of progression but holding off on treatment—a passive approach typical with smoldering myeloma. When the cancer kicked into high gear in 2009, the year after the fire at Tassajara, and John started treatment, I felt relieved, even as I realized how little I could share of his experience, how much less I could control. Waiting for the moment of action, it turned out, was harder than meeting it when it arrived.

  So I understood how it must have felt for the monks waiting for the fire. I knew myself the power of actually meeting something, not being before it or behind it but simply in it. When cancer spreads, when the fire finally arrives, there is no question where your life is at that moment. You become a fire monk.

  By the start of the summer 2010 guest season, the compost shed and flats area woodshed at Tassajara had been rebuilt. Dozing one afternoon at the pool, I awoke to the sound of rocks skipping down the hillside and slamming into the wooden barrier fence built to receive them. There was a new pool bathroom and birdhouse cabin, each lovelier, in some ways, than the structures they replaced. Someone had propped the plaque that used to rest in the old oak tree’s branches against the side of the new birdhouse on a ledge. “The entire universe is the true human body / the entire universe is the gate of liberation,” it still proclaimed, a crack running diagonally across from one burned edge to the other.

  Dharma Rain—“the thing that saved our bacon, hands down,” as Colin once put it—had been dismantled, the piping and connectors stored in the shop. The fire shed had been restocked and a portable satellite phone purchased for emergencies. All new buildings had metal roofs. A weather station antenna measured temperature, wind speed, and humidity hourly from the top of the stone office. Plans for refurbishing the standpipe system and installing a permanent set of rooftop sprinklers were in the works.

  David had moved back to San Francisco and taken on the position of Zen Center secretary—one of four officers of the temple, in charge of communications. Graham was halfway through a two-year tenure as head cook at Tassajara, and Mako had become the new director. She kept Monkeybat’s ashes in a small ceramic bowl on her altar—the cat died in the spring of 2009 and was cremated out at the flats. Colin had returned to Texas. Abbot Steve came to Tassajara for short visits or to lead a summer workshop, always pausing at Ashes Corner on his way in and out.

  That July, I watched the summer residents lay hoses in their first fire drill, slightly awkward in their gear. They took the exercise seriously—it was not the real thing, but everyone knew it could be.

  Each time I arrive at Tassajara, I listen for the creek, for the first moment when I hear its rush through the valley. The creek is the voice under every other at Tassajara, and in this story. Purely just itself, never an idea of itself, it flowed through the whole fire event, through each of Tassajara’s fires—past, present, and future. It flowed through the hoses and the Dharma Rain sprinklers. It revived tired bodies and filled every bowl of soup or cup of tea sustaining each human thought, feeling, and action. Named for a place it cannot stay, the creek is always there—the constant teacher and perfectly humble hero of Fire Monks.

  In this book, I have tried to evoke the many lessons of the 2008 fire at Tassajara—about the basic safety of the valley and the importance of preparation; about the need to rediscover our relationship with wildfire; about recognizing impermanence, being one’s own authority, and finding away through instead of a way out; about the effort and courage it takes just to pay attention. “Don’t chicken out!” Suzuki Roshi said to his students during long sesshins. This isn’t the antithesis of firefighter Stuart Carlson’s motto, “When in doubt, chicken out.” It’s more like: Whatever comes, turn toward it.

  Fire will come, welcome or not. Illness comes, and with it, fear, pain, loss. Turning away, I realized when my strong, athletic husband suddenly became a cancer patient, is really not a workable option. When I look back on John’s diagnosis, what I feel surprises me. It is something like longing—for the high relief of that time, for so much love drawn into focus. The disease seems to be controlled for now. Some days I don’t think about myeloma at all. I’m lulled into a false sense of permanence, of having something that is mine to keep. Until someone sickens or dies and life reminds me, repeats the hard lesson: Nothing is for keeps.

  I once asked Abbot Steve about the value of ruminating on the past within the context of a practice so completely committed to the present moment. Will the 2008 fire’s lessons have any bearing the next time fire comes to Tassajara? It will be a different fire. A different Tassajara.

  He looked at me, smiled, and said, “There is no present that does not include the past.”

  The present is the only actionable moment, but it is not a moment alone. The 2008 fire came into being because of previous conditions that prepared the forest to burn. The fire left its mark—on people, a place, the land—some more lasting than others. It’s difficult to pinpoint when it ended or when it began. Even before the lightning strikes, the seeds of fire existed in the dry tree branches and roots. I could say there was fire, then there wasn’t fire anymore, but the Buddha’s words feel most true:

  All is aflame.

  —February 1, 2011

  Colleen Morton Busch

  Myoka Eido, Subtle River, Endless Path

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people contributed to this effort, in countless ways. I offer deep gratitude.

  For trusting me with their stories: David Zimmerman, Steve Stücky, Mako Voelkel, Graham Ross, Colin Gipson, Shundo Haye, and Devin Patel. And thank you as well to all those not named elsewhere who allowed me to interview them: Alan Block, Alicia Baturoni, Andy Handler, Ann Voelkel, Bryan Clark, Caden Wang, Carl Coppage, Dana Velden, David Nicolson (aka “Spanky”), Edward Skinner, Eva Tuschman, Gina Horrocks, Greg Fain, Heather Iarusso, Ivan Eberle, Jon Wight, Joseph Schommer, Judith Randall, Kathy Early, Keith Meyerhoff, Kim Leigh, Lane Olson, Lauren Bouyea, Maria P. Linsao, Mark Ferriera, Michael Bodman, Michaela O’Connor Bono, Mikwa Strauss, Nancy Sim
mons, Paul Haller, Robert Thomas, Roger Broussal, Shoen Ferrell, Simon Moyes, Sonja Gardenswartz, Ted Marshall, Tim Kroll, Tom Johnson, and Walter and Joanne Ross.

  For expert guidance in the world of wildfire and firefighting: Stuart Carlson, Jack Froggatt, Rick Hutchinson, George Haines, John Maclean, Matt Desmond, Steve Pyne, Ted Putnam, Mike Morales, Bill Stewart, Kelly Andersson. For her instructive film Behind the Lines: Fighting a Wildland Fire, Jennie Reinish. For assistance with my queries to the USFS: Jane Childers and Andrew Madsen. For fielding questions about fire weather: Ryan Walbrun. For help researching the history of temple fires in Japan: Hisayuki Ishimatsu, Alex Vesey, and John Stucky.

  For consulting on Tassajara fire history: David Chadwick. For sharing their own recorded conversations and video footage: Ko Blix, Genine Lentine, and Susan O’Connell and Tim O’ Connor Fraser, directors of the Sitting with Fire documentary. For creating and maintaining the Sitting with Fire blog: Chris Slymon, Kathleen Rose, and the rest of the Jamesburg crew. For her extensive local reporting at thefirelane.blogspot.com: Kelly O’Brien. For illuminating the relationship between fire and the Tassajara landscape: Diane Renshaw, with help from Barry Hecht, Reid Fisher, Sarah Richmond, and David Rogers. For sundry research and technical support: John Kuzel, Karen Sundheim, Nancy Suib, John Mogey, Walter Kieser, Jean Selkirk, and Christy Calame; also Alan Kelly, who transcribed some of my interviews.

  For their insightful feedback on early drafts: Holly Rose, Suzanne LaFetra, and Kathy Briccetti. For asking the question this book tries to answer: Danny Parker. For writing words that inspired and supported FireMonks: the authors whose works I cite, especially Eihei Dōgen. For paying attention to my words: Dan Kasper, Roman Sysyn, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Henry Hughes, Patricia Henley, Marianne Boruch, Bruce Weigl, and Kathryn Arnold.

  For their professionalism, talent, and warmth: Penguin Press associate editor Lindsay Whalen; FireMonks jacket designer Tal Goretsky; and my publicist, Stephanie Gilardi. For their enthusiasm for this project and confidence in me: Leslie James, Michael Wenger, and especially Jane Hirshfield, whose words and encouragement thread through FireMonks. For pushing this book to be its best: Michael Katz, my agent, and the incomparable Ann Godoff, my editor.

  For their constant teaching: Edward Brown, Sojun Mel Weitsman, Alan Senauke, and the Berkeley Zen Center sangha. For their love and friendship: Nora Isaacs, Tove Jensen, Jeanne Ricci, Jen Richter, David Keplinger, and my family. For being both mountain and moon: John Busch. For taking care of Tassajara: monks, firefighters, neighbors, friends, guests—bodhisattvas all.

  NOTES

  vii “Fire is more than an ecological process”: Stephen J. Pyne quote, from the NOVA documentary Fire Wars. Pyne has written numerous books on fire. Particularly instructive to me was Fire on the Rim: A Firefighter’s Season at the Grand Canyon (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1995).

  PROLOGUE

  4 One of the monks who fought the fire: Taken from the trailer for Sitting with Fire, a documentary film, www.sittingwithfiremovie.com.

  CHAPTER I: LIGHTNING STRIKES

  6 Fire had burned 51, 125 acres: From the six a.m. Indians fire incident status report, or ICS 209, for June 21, 2008, and from www.inciweb.org. Maps and information on the Basin Complex fire can be found at http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1367/.

  9 Chinese laborers built the road: From “The First Passenger Wagon to Reach Tassajara,” The Double Cone Quarterly 3, no. 2 (Winter Solstice 2000), p. 2.

  12 The basalt and granite walls of the stone rooms: This and other architectural details are from Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice, by Paul Discoe with Alexandra Quin (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2008), and from interviews with Tassajara residents.

  12 A grand turn-of-the-century sandstone hotel: Says David Chadwick, keeper of Tassajara history and lore, “Joan Crawford’s ex-husband was the ownerthen. He was there. Some suspected him of arson. The remaining building stones were bulldozed into the basement. When we first made a garden there back in ’67, I remember us digging up one big sandstone block after another.” For more on the history of fire at Tassajara, visit www.cuke.com/tassfire.

  15 Refused to leave: From a profile of Jane Hirshfield by the author, Tricycle (spring 2006), p. 73.

  15 Stopped in Jamesburg: An unincorporated community named for the man who founded it in the 1860s, John James—of no relation to Leslie James.

  18 Suzuki Roshi had been looking for several years for the right place: From Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki, by David Chadwick (New York: Broadway Books, 1999), p. 265.

  19 The first known structures at Tassajara: This and other Tassajara history comes from a file of historical documents and timelines that resides on the back porch behind the stone office, from Crooked Cucumber, and The Double Cone Quarterly article referenced above.

  19 Robert and Anna Beck purchased Tassajara: Details about the Becks’ ownership and sale of Tassajara and quotes from Robert Beck are taken from David Chadwick’s interview with Beck at www.cuke.com.

  20 Now translated into Czech, Dutch, Finnish: From David Chadwick’s afterword in the 40th anniversary edition of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 2010), p. 137.

  21 Instructions for the Zen Cook: All quotes from this text, also known as the Tenzo Kyōkun, are taken from From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life, by Zen Master Dōgen and Kōshō Uchiyama, translated by Thomas Wright (New York: Weatherhill, 1983).

  22 She’d read about abuses of power: The story of Suzuki Roshi Dharma heir Richard Baker’s fall from grace and resignation from the abbacy of the San Francisco Zen Center in 1984 has been well documented. It does not need repeating here, except to say that the crisis raised issues of authority and decision making for the organization that emerged again during the 2008 Basin Complex fire—especially during the final evacuation, when Tassajara residents had to face the hierarchical power structure of the firefighting authorities and decide internally who would stay and who would leave, on the spot and under intense pressure.

  CHAPTER 2 : FIRES MERGE

  30 “The great way is not difficult”: A popular phrase from the Hsin Hsin Ming, attributed to Sêng-ts’an (Kanchi Sosan in Japanese), the third Chinese Zen patriarch, who lived in the sixth century.

  30 “It was as if the set for a play had suddenly been stripped from the stage”: Quote is from Eva Tuschman, a twenty-four-year-old summer guest cook.

  32 One student’s apartment building in San Francisco had burned down: Forty-eightyear-old Guatemala native Edward Skinner.

  32 Another lived in New Orleans: Twenty-five-year-old Michaela O’Connor Bono.

  35 “Stay home and stay inside”: From a press release issued by the California Governor’s Office, June 25, 2008.

  36 A carload of four senior students: Shundo David Haye, Greg Fain, Simon Moyes, and Aliyu Turaki.

  38 Three other Tassajara senior staff members, also women: Judith Randall (zendo manager), Kathy Early (treasurer), and Maria P. Linsao (work leader).

  40 In 2008, about half of the electricity used: By the close of summer 2010, Tassajara had transitioned to 100 percent solar power.

  42 Find out for yourself: From a talk given March 15, 1969. A transcript is available through the Shunryu Suzuki digital archives, http://shunryusuzuki.com/suzuki/base.htm.

  CHAPTER 3: THE THREE-DAY-AWAY FIRE

  43 Genjo Koan: These well-known lines from Dōgen’s text were taken from the version used at San Francisco Zen Center, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Robert Aitken. See http://www.sfzc.org/sp–download/liturgy/24–Genjo–Koan.pdf.

  44 Quick turn of events: That day, Grace Dammann, a Green Gulch Farm resident who had been in a coma for weeks after a head-on auto collision on the Golden Gate Bridge, had woken up and mouthed her daughter’s name—but the Tassajara evacuees didn’t know this yet.

  44 “I’d just left my whole life”: Quote from forty-one-year-old resident Heather Iarusso.
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  46 “There’s no good place in the middle of the wilderness to fight the fires”: IC Dietrich’s quote is from a KAZU report by Krista Almanzan, aired June 26, 2008.

  46 At 178,000 acres burned: Both the 2007 Zaca fire (240,207 acres) and the 2003 Cedar fire (280,278 acres) surpassed the Marble Cone fire in size.

  48 The two-thousand-year-old stone Gandharan Buddha statue: From Gandhara, an area along the Silk Road where Buddhism once thrived—“where Greek Hellenic culture met Indian culture through Alexander the Great,” according to Abbot Steve. The region, in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, produced the earliest depictions of the Buddha in human form.

  48 Probably because of a faulty pilot light on a propane gas refrigerator: Jane Hirshfield told me that the zendo fire may also have started in the kerosene-soaked rags used for cleaning the lamps: “As far as I know, no one’s ever made a definitive call. I think we don’t actually know.”

  53 The unofficial state ecosystem: Details on fire and chaparral in the Santa Lucias come from a talk by ecologist Diane Renshaw at San Francisco Zen Center on January 8, 2010, and many e-mail exchanges. Diane also provided the fascinating details on fire beetles in this section. For more, see Introduction to California Chaparral, by Ronald D. Quinn and Sterling C. Keeley (University of California Press, 2006), pp. 71–73, and Warren E. Leary, “On the Trail of Fire-Detecting Beetles,” New York Times, May 11, 1999.

  57 Made cookies for the inmates: Sixty-five-year-old Tom Johnson.