I live close to tall trees in Northern California, and on the afternoon of
June 12, I held our mare, Millie, and watched wildfire advance toward the
draw not 1,000 away where my wife and I had almost finished building our
home. We'd been working on the house for almost four years.
The wind pushed a towering cloud of black smoke west of our place. I found
hope in the lateral drift. I believed that the inferno then burning for a
second day would slide by us.
But when I heard explosions, caused by God knows what as fire consumed the
homes farther up the road -- explosions that grew louder as the homes of
nearer neighbors were hit -- hope began to fade.
And it vanished altogether when I saw whole trees torch off and heard the
roar of destruction that nothing would quiet. Not the DC 10 dropping its
12,000 gallons of fire retardant, not the engines staged along the gravel
roadway, and certainly not my silent prayers, offered far too late. When a
fireman yelled "Get the hell out!" I felt the kind of sickness that comes
from powerlessness in the path of fury.
Jogging away from the inferno, Millie tossing her head against the roped
halter, I couldn't imagine how I would tell my wife and our 14-year-old
daughter that every board and nail, every ill-hung door and crooked tile,
every left-behind artifact of our lives was gone.
All of it: Georgia's ribbons, her childhood drawings of cats, her notes of
love; the books and writings, the framed family pictures, the glass art and
paintings from my sister and mother, my brother's ink drawings, and my
father's watch, the one he wore the day he died and which I wear -- wore --
when I need his support. All of it violently rendered into nothing more than
a smoldering statistical blip.
By 2:30 p.m. that day, our house had become rubble. It was one of more than
70 homes lost to the Humboldt Fire, and one of 102 residences destroyed by
wildfire that week alone in Butte County, Calif. As I write this weeks
later, the fires still rage, people are still fleeing - my family and I had
to move out of a rental house on July 9, as a new fire closed in on us on -
and another 40 homes were lost in a nearby community.
Our experience, like everyone's, is simple. It is also entirely commonplace.
We thought we were safe. We thought disasters were only stories. We thought
that human action could forestall calamity. Surely, a retardant-laden jet
and all those fire trucks, coupled with the stucco siding and tile roof, not
to mention the home-sprinkler system backed by a 5,000-gallon water tank --
surely, all of this would be enough to defeat something as simple, as
archaic, as fire.
Such silliness.
So what does fire teach? Perspective, I suppose, though that depends on your
vantage point. The one I'm sitting on now teeters between gratitude and
grief. The support and aid we've received from neighbors and strangers has
been remarkable, and our appreciation for this community has grown
immeasurably. But the loss of our house and belongings will haunt the three
of us for a good time. I doubt we'll connect with another dwelling as fully
as we did the ruined one. I fear we will never again put down our roots as
deeply.
Sometimes I look for meaning, or at least symmetry. The land we lived on was
untouched until we borrowed it from nature. We took away many of the trees
and the brush and we changed the habitat, putting our needs first. Then the
brush and the trees conspired with a spark to take it back.
But that's too simple. Wildfire is not something to which one can attach a
meaning. It is simply the chaos of nature taking over, and maybe that's the
lesson. We think that because we can turn jetliners into air tankers, we are
in control. We think we can fix anything if we just put enough technology,
money and bureaucracy into the effort. But we delude ourselves, just as I
deluded myself for a time June 12.
The reality is that, here in the West, we live in fire's realm. It is less a
neighbor than an inattentive overlord, an absentee landlord who might ignore
you for generations and then, on a whim, suddenly decide to burn down your
house. When it's your house that's taken, you may become a refugee, fleeing
with only what you can carry or lead away.
Then, after the initial shock, you'll have to ask yourself: Now what? My
family lost almost everything we owned. But we've held on to our
stubbornness. We will rebuild, right here, back in that draw.
That's the decision, though I don't think I truly believe it yet. It
probably won't sink in until I am finally able to lead Millie back home.
Gordon Gregory is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). He is a freelance writer who lives near the town of
Paradise, in Northern California.
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