Name an emotion, any emotion, and I’ll wager survivors of the largest wildfire in Texas history have experienced it over the last fourteen days. Foreboding? Yep. Disbelief? Uh huh.

Terror, anxiety, heartbreak, anger, despair, shock, relief, gratitude, guilt, love, numbness, compassion, empathy, grief? Check and double check.

That gamut of feelings seems reasonable response to attack by a 100-mile long, 34-mile wide monster that careened through our world. The swath of topographical destruction in its aftermath makes the lunar surface look verdant by comparison. The toll on two-legged, four-legged, multi-legged and winged denizens seems incalculable.

Oh, we’ll try. Paper, pencils, spreadsheets, records and projections will be brought to bear in assigning value lost. The tab will be astronomical.

The real difficulty comes in quantifying with dollars and cents, the gut-wrenching pain of destroying three Quarter Horse athletes in their prime and a toddler’s Shetland pony due to burns. Or the anguish at finding 13 scorched yearling replacement heifers piled against a fence.

How do you process the sight of mile after mile of devastatingly blackened pastureland? Our new environment: barren, blowing sand hills devoid of a stalk of living vegetation.

Conversely, how do you pin a price tag on driving down the caliche road to find three semi-loads of prairie hay being unloaded following two loads of wheat hay from Hobbs, NM and Plains, TX the previous evening? That convoy was delayed in Lubbock where a DPS trooper decided a lights-and-sirens escort beat a speeding citation.

How do you explain 71 yearling program steers—sold 5 days before the Smokehouse Creek fire torched our reality—implausibly, miraculously surviving unscathed? Their pasture completely burned. The adjacent pasture where they landed, burned. It’s impossible.

These 700lb. black baldies, showing clear lash-fringed eyes, undamaged muzzles with unblemished hides, shipped Saturday to their original Superior Livestock Auction buyer at the original heart-stopping price. How does that happen?

My advice if you’re going to battle a conflagration on this scale? Get yourself a Drew Hill. The average human heart weighs 10 ounces. If his isn’t at least double that—I’ll eat one of Gober Mitchell’s Resistol hats.

He’s indefatigable and dedicated to the land and the animals under his care. His character shines. His faith guides him. And when disaster strikes, guess who appears? His family (all of them) friends (all of them) cowboy colleagues (same) neighbors—you get the idea.

Drew and his battalion risk life-and-limb, stomp out smoldering embers, search for and haul survivors, euthanize gravely injured animals, treat burns, jump on tractors, unload/stack/roll-out hay, water livestock, repair fence, change flats, bring food, bury the dead, drop off medicine, supplies and feed, bottle-feed orphans, deliver heartfelt hugs, mop up tears. Then get up and do it all over again the next day.

Make no mistake, it is a battle. Exhausting and filthy, highly stressful and nightmare-inducing, waging war in these apocalyptic trenches requires courage and tenacity.

How do you begin to thank the helpers? There. Are. No. Words.

We’ve been where you are. We know how it feels. We know what is needed. We wish we didn’t, but we do—that’s why we’re here.

LORI RUTLEDGE

God doesn’t choose which neighbor to ravage and whom to skirt. Being spared or burned out is a function of physics, geography and meteorological whims. Or in an extremely personal example, the exquisite timing of three Herculean Locust Grove firemen who placed themselves between 48-mph flames and the foundations of two houses and won.

Hey Travis, Chaz and Jack—Kathy Hill and I took a vote, y’all are the OG (Original Gangsta) of fire dudes.

Mother Nature is a wily, capricious witch who tries to kill us on the regular.

I keep coming back to this:

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 New Living Translation (NLT) “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.”