The trees burn each one in a different way, the soulless who burn them all do it in the same way: without thinking twice about the tragedy they are causing, indifferent. I learned that each species of tree has a different resistance to fire, if you allow me the exaggerated simile, if not raw, then almost bark. I was a fifteen-year-old girl when a fire broke out, a euphemism to say that someone or someone caused it, in the mountain range that stands in front of the family home, the mountain range that you can almost touch by reaching out your hand from the sunroom.
Half the mountain belongs to Galicia, the other half to Portugal, but the flames go where they want. In a few minutes a red stripe of blood, blood from the trees, blood from the memory of those who had enjoyed it so many decades ago, perhaps centuries, powerless now in their graves, a line of fire took everything while the smell The burnt ached in my throat, mine, crying for paradise lost: even if they replanted the mountain, I was sure I would not live to see again the forest that I took for granted and that had now been transformed into a cemetery. But to my surprise it was not.
Carballos need more than a fire to die. Inside, the resistance that the following spring made them sprout again remained, and I saw that my grandfather was right: when nature put chariots here he knew what he was doing, he knew that despite everything they would live. The pines, imported from other climates, did not reborn. The fire had consumed them. This was not his house. So the eucalyptus had not yet arrived...
I think about it while the flames devour the forests of Asturias, climb the mountains as if it were an excursion, a death walk. They say that it has been provoked, no less than 91 lights. Nature does not do that, it can send lightning, an electrical storm, but it does not walk around leaving a seed for its destruction at each step. Who can want to kill a tree, the life that lives in it, those who see it and enjoy it, feel it and live it? Fall on those wicked an eternal curse.
