Bridgette Corridan shares how she leaned in to a spiritual practice during California’s wildfire season.
The sky turning orange in San Francisco and the lingering smoke and smog that lasted a week was unforgettable. I stood at my window, unable to look away, as the world I knew shifted. The air outside was unbreathable, thick with smoke from the wildfires that had become an all-too-common part of life in California.
It was daytime, yet it felt like dusk. It felt like the culmination of a question many of us in the Bay Area had been asking: Do we stay? The very reason we pay so much to live here—the promise of year-round outdoor living—was suddenly taken away.
Being trapped indoors was a difficult reality. It was a crisis that forced me, and many others, to go inward. And for me, going inward meant leaning into my spiritual practice. Instead of feeling powerless, I leaned into what I knew had power: my ability to envision a future different from the one I was facing. My friends and I would meditate together, focusing on a collective bubble of protection that would bring rain when needed and keep the land and people safe from the fires.
In moments when it feels like the current world is the only way it can be, our creativity and our imagination can shut down. When we believe what we’re facing is all there is, it paralyzes us. The practice of mindful envisioning is my way of pushing back. It’s about tapping into a well of imagination to believe in a different path forward. It’s how I find hope and agency when the sky is falling — or in this case, turning orange — and it is how I believe we can collectively create a brighter future for all.