The Panhandle, a humble home for Texas’ half-buried Cadillacs, cattle ranches, and most importantly, 72-ounce steak, bursted into a blaze on an unusually warm and dry February evening due to a broken utility pole that downed power lines. As a smokey film loomed over the skies, a scarlet inferno claimed 2 lives and hundreds of homes while engulfing over 1 million acres of Texas’ northwestern frontier, earning it a silver medal for American wildfires. The fire would later blow into a sliver of Oklahoma. In an instant, many Texans’ livelihoods, their houses, their trailers, their churches, their schools, their pickup trucks, their livestock, were all gone. Upon returning to their communities after being evicted by the fire, many found that all they had left to their name was their house’s chimney and a burnt car. For many ranchers, they felt like they had just returned to a mini-Armageddon. The fire forced them to rebuild their houses, bury their dead cattle, and restart their businesses.

The wildfire left quiet small towns, even quieter. Once grassy plains became blank. In the hardest-hit communities, roads shut down, workplaces remained empty, and schools couldn’t hold classes. There were no laughs heard from children playing in the playgrounds. Only a few squaks and moos from the surviving chicken and cows, and a few zooms from non-profit disaster relief vehicles and Texans’ cars returning to their rubble. As Panhandle communities continue to rebuild, let us not forget the spirit of the American frontier.