Robinson Jeffers built his home in Carmel from stones on the beach. He planted. One can visit Tor House with an appointment and view it with a docent and it is an amazing treat.
My Tor House newsletter arrives today with this dedication to the Big Sur Community and the Firefighters battling the 2008 Basin Fire. Let us hope, once out, it is the last fire for this year and the next. We need rain.
FIRE ON THE HILLS
The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brushfire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.
He had come from far off for the good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue, and the hills merciless black.
The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.
from Thurso's Landing (1931) Hunt: Vol II. p. 172.
Robinson Jeffers
