The summer I was 17, I drove to Alaska with my aunt, on what was no longer called the Alcan Highway. It was a dream trip. And that was the summer I first saw fireweed. And questioned how anything so beautiful could be called a weed? And decided that perhaps grownups were crazy (a view I hold to this very day).

If there is a heaven, it will need to be full of fireweed, or I won't accept it as such.


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