SARA GETTYS SARA GETTYS/Yakima Herald-Republic Skip Slack sets fire to tumbleweeds that have blown into a pile in an irrigation canal, cleaning it out before the water flows in the spring, March 4, 2008. Links   E-mail                         Print Advertisement

Change is elemental in the Yakima Valley. 

Snow gives way to what will soon be the hot and arid days of summer. The landscape, usually painted in the muted yellows, browns, and greens of a desert climate, blooms brilliant green for a few weeks. And where swift irrigation waters will soon flow, flames devour the winter weeds that have tumbled and rested along the canals that feed this fertile landscape.

With a whoosh, dry tinder catches and sends a wave of heat into the spring sky, still chilly. Carrying this heat, even the air leaves a shadow on the sand at the bottom of the canal -- a wriggling column, the invisible made visible. Embers crackle, spitting sparks. Flames dance and writhe in a short-lived celebration.

This is a yearly task, maybe not a ritual in the traditional sense, more a job, a duty, a chore. Each spring, crews work the canals and ditches, clearing and burning brush.

It's also a reminder about the ties we bear to our environment, the powerful forces that surround us, subdued and sustaining.

The lives of this Valley are tied to these elements -- from the soil that provides, directly or indirectly, our livelihoods, to the rush of snowmelt that feeds those crops, to the flash of fire that can mark the beginning of the growing season or wither sage and leave twisted black branches scraping the bright, cloudless skies.