Chapter Four

Becky decided to stay exactly where she was unless the forest fire became a more serious threat. She knew it was possible that could happen at any time and dreaded the thought.

“God, please send enough rain to put out the fire in that area before it spreads any this way.” 

As the day wore on, the billowing clouds to the west seemed to be dying down, while the smoke from her small fire on the gravel road continued to rise straight up. With early evening mist settling in and the distant forest fire smoke, it was almost ethereal as long shadows of evening hung heavy everywhere.

Becky felt content and even more surprisingly at peace with God, herself and others, even though in the back of her mind there was concern related to the forest fire.

“How long will it take for someone to come along?” She wondered. “There should have been a vehicle on this gravel road by now.”

She realized that there was no point in fretting and as it began to get dark, she pulled her sleeping bag off the car roof and set up her makeshift bed in the back of the car. 

She was still tempted to sleep right beside her fire but decided not to do so, as it would be safer in the car, especially if there were bears that came out of the forest. She could still smell some smoke and suspected  the animals would not return while they could smell it. She knew that by morning things might be different.

To the west, there was a reddish glow as the sun slowly disappeared into the lingering cloud of smoke. Obviously the forest fire was still burning, but not in the same way that it had previously.

“Maybe God has answered my prayer?”

Most of the sky was clear. The moon was beautiful to behold and the stars appeared to twinkle. An occasional flash of northern lights danced in the sky, lighting up distant mountain peaks. 

Becky added more wet branches and old, dead wood to her fire and began to get ready to settle in for the night. Using her bottled water to wash and brush her teeth was no longer a problem. She decided to stay fully clothed wearing runners too, with her backpack easy to reach in case she had to leave the area suddenly. 

"Plan A: stay where I am. Plan B: go which ever way is most appropriate depending upon the direction of the wind and where the forest fire is heading."

Becky was trying to plan for every possible scenario. "One thing about being in the mountains, even when there is some smoke in the air, it still is really fresh," she thought, as she drifted off to sleep.

Becky continued to wrestle with her thoughts throughout the night and dreamed that she was climbing back up the rock cliff. This time a gentle, white mountain-goat led her up the pathway.

Becky had taken a major highway several hundred miles to meet with her publisher. Having made trips before, she decided to take the gravel road directly through the Majestic Mountain Range when she headed back home, as it was many miles shorter. This would be a new experience for her. Her entire life had been one of many new experiences and discoveries. This gravel road was just another new challenge to her, this time a mountain to overcome. The Majestic Mountain range was gradually beginning to look like it might be the biggest challenge of her entire life.

Becky was not afraid and had learned to confront fear early in her life. By facing her fears head on, she was not controlled or bound in any way by fear. She loved life and all it had to offer. She was determined that the typical reactions to fear like fight, flight or paralysis would never do her in, as she was a natural over-comer from the moment she was born.

As a newborn infant, she had struggled for survival because of a difficult delivery and numerous complications following her birth. She was an only child. Her parents were kind, loving and compassionate. She overcame one problem after another and gradually increased her courage, as well as her strength. 

Tragedy struck when both of her parents died following a motor vehicle accident. Her father was gone almost immediately. Just before her mother passed away in the hospital, she told her daughter, who was age eight at the time, that everyone is born alone and dies alone.

“Millions of people spend many years living alone, by choice,” she had said. Becky always remembered her words. 

Becky made the choice to live alone as soon as she was old enough, much to the dismay of her foster parents who were almost too over-protective. They knew that she would have to find her way through life and made her promise to visit whenever she could. She agreed to do that.

Becky's foster mother had started a diary when Becky first came to live with her. Becky watched her write in it every day and she began to write too. Later, she found her foster mother’s diary and was devastated by what she read. She never told her foster parents that she had learned the circumstances of her parent's accident.  

Over the years, Becky completed high school and received numerous awards for her writing. In fact, she won a full, scholarship for college, where she focused on professional writing. She became determined to become a freelance writer. 

Upon graduation, the local newspaper where she had worked part time while in college, hired her immediately. They asked her to move to a different city in order to expand their horizons, so once again, Becky’s life changed. With full time work guaranteed, she was able to purchase a house on the outskirts of town. She worked full time and dedicated her spare time to writing. Over the past year, she had struggled with her first, full-length, fiction manuscript. In many ways, it was not unlike the story of her life, but her gut instinct gut instinct told her that this was going to be another challenge in her life. For Becky, rejection was never easy for her to deal with, but the rejection of her major fiction project had blinded her mentally and emotionally.

Being stranded in the Majestic Mountain range made her realize that this area was truly as gorgeous as others had told her it would be. There were waves of tumultuous rocks, some of them with snow-covered peaks that glowed in the sun and moonlight. Majestic Mountain was astoundingly beautiful and majestic.

She had wanted to see these mountains up close for a long time. In fact, she longed to spend time in the mountains, so that she prove to herself and others that she was not the fragile china doll that everyone thought she was. China dolls are fine sitting on the shelf, but she was determined there was no way that she was going to spend her life like that. She had struggled early for her independence and was not about to give in to defeat. Striking out on her own in a new city gave her an opportunity to see what she was capable of doing on her own.

“The worst I could do would be to fail, but failure is not on my agenda,” she insisted to herself. It took a lot of courage to pack up everything she owned, leave everyone she had grown up with and start afresh in a city where there were only strangers. “They won’t be strangers for long.”

She had hoped to meet someone who she would fall in love with and eventually get married, raise a family and live a full life. So far, that had not happened, but she knew there was always a possibility of that in the future.