Go to the Skyline and Look for the Fireweed
By Renee Ratcliffe
( The following blog post was originally posted to social media in August 2025, following a trip to the Canadian Rockies. It is re-posted here with permission by Renee )
Our experiences in the Canadian Rockies have been incredibly beautiful. Banff is everything people say it is - turquoise lakes, impressive glaciers, rushing waterfalls, and mammoth mountains that go on for miles (or kilometers, eh?) I even saw a black bear! In the wild!
We booked a lake tour that took us north, through Jasper National Park. John and I didn’t realize that Jasper experienced a devastating wildfire last summer. We drove through blackened terrain and mountains, once blanketed in green, now dotted with decay. After leaving Banff - lush and brimming with life - I felt thoroughly depressed by the desolation of Jasper’s stark, charred landscape.
We asked our boat guide for recommendations after our tour. There didn’t seem to be anywhere comparable to Banff for hiking. “Go to the Skyline,” he said, “and look for the fireweed.”
The Skyline on Signal Mountain is Jasper’s highest and (usually) most scenic trail. The path was clear and steep along the torched alpine ridge. Our guide advised us that a mama bear & cubs had been spotted in the area, and I was nervously grateful that she couldn’t possibly be unseen to us behind trees. Everything was exposed. As we climbed the remains of the forest, I thought, “This is just … ugly.” Sure, there were expansive vistas beyond us, but signs of death lay everywhere our feet stepped.
Along the climb, though, we noticed dots of purple, green, and pink intermixed with blackened tree trunks. Fireweed is a bright pink flower which flourishes in areas ruined by fire, thus its name. Our guide explained that fire is a beneficial part of a forest’s life cycle. When the tree cover hides the sun from the ground, tender vegetation is less likely to thrive. But the wildlife depends on leafy plants, and a natural clearing of the forest allows new life to grow. Death makes way for richer, freer, nourishing soil.
As someone who’s learning and practicing how to write, the fireweed’s metaphor seems too easy, too obvious. But yesterday offered me much more than a pithy idea; it was a real life walk through ends and beginnings. I saw some of my deepest desires in those ashen aspen trees. The dreams and prayers of people i love are there too. I don’t yet perceive any purpose in this pain. You understand what it’s like when life feels barren, vulnerable, fragile, just … ugly. We need one another to point us to fireweed, those fiery, resilient signals that joy will rise. Be my guide, and i will be yours, and we will find it’s unmistakable to see how our Creator is still working, still birthing beauty, still robbing death of its purposelessness.
The fireweeds will eventually wither or smother under a blanket of November snow or become a bear cub’s tasty snack. So God helps me see that fireweed is indeed as metaphorical as it is literal. To perceive lasting hope in the fireweed is to apply its resilience not to my aging body or to my temporal circumstances but to my soul which is kept alive forever in Christ.
“So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
So I remember that hope is real and alive, and not just in my dying but in my living. Moment to moment, against the char of loss, uncertainty, and depression, grace unfolds like an unfurling magenta fireweed. If everything in this earthly life was stripped away, i don’t know that a flower would spring from the ashes. I really don’t. But moments of grace remind me that there is more to this life. Because of Jesus, hope does not die. We can keep climbing, if not in body then in spirit, seeking glimmers of beauty, looking upward to Jesus’ eternal joy, and trusting we never walk alone.
Go to the Skyline, He said, and look for the fireweed.
About Renee Ratcliffe
Renee is a Christ follower, wife to John, mom to Caroline. Her professional background is special education, and she graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a Master of Arts in Christian Counseling. She is an advocate and caregiver for individuals who live with special needs and enjoys writing about disability theology, belonging, and mutuality.
