It's not a raging wildfire.

Not physically, anyway. Metaphorically, maybe...

It's a Saskatchewan sunset. 

As some of you know (since at least half of DOH readers are related to me by blood or marriage), my mom died two month ago today, on the feast of All Souls', Nov. 2, 2016. (I'm still processing, so that is partly why blogging has been weird and sporadic.)  

The next day, November 3, my husband and three youngest daughters travelled home to the farm where I grew up, to be with my dad and to prepare for Mom's funeral. As we drove along, I was awed by a spectacular, blazing sunset. Photos cannot do it justice, especially when you are taking snaps through a car window, using a smartphone camera, and travelling 100 kph. 

The view changed moment to moment, not only as the sun sank beneath the horizon, but as the pink wispy clouds seemed to drift (or be drawn?) higher and higher toward heaven and the darkening sky. Little snapshots such as these cannot adequately convey the sensation of looking up at the immensity and grandeur of the sky, and how relatively small I felt by comparison.

The wispy clouds reminded me of doves or angels in flight.

As I contemplated the sunset, the words of the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr came to mind. Which seemed kind of appropriate on numerous levels. The poet was a young WWII pilot (he died at age 19). Mom was buried on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, the day we honour our war dead.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

.