Poet explores healing in new book following devastating wildfire in Lytton, B.C.

Meghan Fandrich was working in her coffee shop in Lytton, B.C., when another community member came running in to let them know the town was burning. 

There was no time to prepare.

"My employees and I, we just grabbed what we could, locked it up, thinking we'd be able to unlock the door again in a few days, and left. And that was the last time I saw it," she told On The Coast host Gloria Macarenko. 

That was on June 30, 2021, when a wildfire destroyed the village of Lytton after it experienced several days of extreme temperatures. The day before the fire, temperature records were set for three straight days, peaking at 49.6 C, breaking a Canadian record.

Now, Fandrich has released a book of poetry entitled Burning Sage: Poems from the Lytton Fire, which explores her healing journey from that moment until now. 

When she left Lytton, Fandrich drove to her parents' home south of the village. The fire was moving north, and her parents weren't evacuated. 

As she drove by her house, she noticed it was still standing — though it was surrounded by flames. 

"I think in a moment like that, nothing is going through your mind," Fandrich said. 

"It's just survival, maybe, where you're just in a numb state and doing what you need to do. I don't know how to explain it, but it's very automatic and far beyond any emotion."

Her home remains intact, thanks to helicopters dropping water on the roof, Fandrich said.

Her coffee shop, however, is gone. 

A little over a year after the fire, Fandrich was writing down a memory of the fire for a friend, and it came out as a poem. 

"It came out as all of the grief that had been hiding behind survival."

She kept writing — for months. 

The writing was cathartic, she said, but what was more healing was sharing her poems with others. The trauma she had experienced had felt isolating, but sharing it with others who felt her pain made her feel less alone. 

"Other people had felt the same things, or this brought up other emotions that they've been feeling, and even people who hadn't experienced our fire, it was bringing up these big recognizable emotions for them as well."

Burning Sage: Poems from the Lytton Fire is available now.