Fire in My Home Land

For nine minutes on August 1, I had a vision of life without all my stuff. That could kinda sorta be a good thing, right? For instance, I would no longer need to agonize over when to let go of that raggedy yet comfy house dress that I wear all the time when no one’s looking. On the other hand, having all my clothes burn up doesn’t seem like a practical solution to my inability to part with a worn-out house dress. 

Here in NorCal, we live at Climate Change Ground Zero. We have few Climate Change deniers in Cali because we can see the flames and smell the smoke. I am not a lobster on slow cook. I have noticed things heating up. Having lived on this land for decades, I remember when we had only a handful of super-hot days in the summer, and I have the mental capacity to compare that to the present time when we have many boiling-hot days (plus persistent drought and extremely dry vegetation). I imagine I’m not supposed to use the term “mental capacity,” since it’s probably one of the phrases banned from public discourse by the current government (because if the president can’t have it then no one else can either). I say this in light of the fact that a program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities recently warned me not to use the term “social justice” in a federal grant that I’m writing if I want to get the project funded. (True story. I did not make this up.)

I choose to live in Mendocino County because I cherish our magnificent landscape and I have many longtime friends here, who share my passion for our home land and a life close to nature. We live far from the madding crowd, in a place where we can joyously embrace the beauty of this planet to the last drop. But we also live with fire threat. Theoretically, I have always known that my neighborhood could go up in flames, but I never truly pictured that scenario in concrete terms until a fire broke out just a couple of miles from my house. We got lucky on Aug. 1. Because the monstrous double-headed Mendocino Complex Fire was blazing within fifteen miles of where I live, firefighters and their arsenal of anti-fire tools were conveniently close at hand. They arrived in our neighborhood so fast that I suspect they teleported. They swooped in with fire trucks, hoses, water-tanker helicopters, bulldozers, fire retardant, water balloons, super soakers, and magic wands. They extinguished that fire before anyone had time to break out the marshmallows.

I found out about the fire because I had just left my house for an optometry appointment when I noticed a stampede of cars passing me in the opposite lane on the main road that leads into my subdivision. I wondered if someone was having a party and forgot to invite me. Then I saw a fleet of emergency vehicles rushing by and a couple of water-tanker helicopters flying overhead. It dawned on me that a fire had probably started burning very near my house (because I have the mental capacity to deduce that). My first thought was that I had made the appointment with the optometrist four months earlier because he had no sooner openings and was about to retire to boot, so my window of opportunity for eye care was about to slam shut since I had to turn around and go home, determine the location of the fire, and likely attempt to rescue my two aging cats. No one should have to choose between vision and cats.

I allow my cats outdoors during the day, but they must stay in at night for their safety. I lure them in at sunset with cat food. The fire broke out in the afternoon, so I would have to find them, figure out how to catch them, and bring them inside where I could crate them for possible evacuation. I cannot stress the level of difficulty of this maneuver. They are crafty and have their own diabolical feline thoughts. They refuse to let me catch them or coax them inside when they suspect I have a secret motive for making them come in, even if the motive is to feed them dinner. Furthermore, one of them is semi-senile and behaves somewhat irrationally under the best of circumstances. She often sits outside the glass door to the deck peering in longingly as if waiting for me to let her inside, and when I open the door she dashes back into the yard as if she has seen a pit bull. I would have much rather gone to the optometrist than wrangle my cats during a biblically catastrophic event. But cats happen.

When I arrived back at my house, I dashed inside and checked online at reliable sources where I had gone for updated fire news before. I learned that a fire had indeed started within two miles of my house. The report stated that emergency personnel on the scene expected to contain the fire quickly, but they had placed my neighborhood on standby for evacuation. Nine minutes would elapse before I rechecked online and learned that the fire had been “knocked down” (firefighter lingo meaning the fire was out) and the evacuation advisory had been lifted. I’m not sure if “knocked down” is a federally approved or censored phrase.

In that nine minutes, I opened the garage doors in case the power went out; chased one cat around the front porch, miraculously grabbed her, and brought her inside while she complained vigorously; circled the house calling for the semi-senile cat, with no luck whatsoever; called the optometrist’s office to explain why I had missed my appointment; rang the doorbells of several immediate neighbors to make sure they knew what was going on; called Ron to give him a heads up (he was at band practice and couldn’t hear a thing I said over the racket until he yelled for his musical compatriots to knock it off); threw all the photo albums into boxes and laundry baskets; collected the files with important documents (e.g., marriage license, birth certificates, will, recipe for gluten-free blueberry muffins, file of the Wachspress name misspelled, lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”); tossed Ron’s meds into a cooler; threw the laundry baskets, documents, meds, my Sabbath candlesticks, favorite cast iron frying pan, and our laptop computers into my car; baked a soufflé; ran a load of laundry; dug up and potted my favorite peach tree for removal; and disarmed an atomic bomb. I now feel confident that given nine minutes to evacuate I could wrangle my most precious possessions into my car, except for that stupid-ass senile cat.

  

Ten years ago, Ron and I moved off our remote, wooded 40 acres in the hills and resettled in a more populated small-town suburban subdivision. We live in a place less vulnerable to fire and more accessible to emergency personnel now than on that hillside covered in trees, dead grass, and dry brush. But in truth, nowhere is safe. Not anywhere in Cali and not anywhere else on the planet. While Cali burned, the East Coast was on flood watch and the Southeast entered peak hurricane season. Last week an earthquake killed 300 people in Indonesia, while 80 people in Japan and 29 in South Korea dropped dead of heat stroke because it was simply too hot. They cooked. A devastating heat wave and wildfires continue to spread in Europe. France shut down several nuclear power plants because they couldn’t keep the reactors cool enough. A lake that was once part of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan is now 75 miles from the sea and drying up fast; and strangely, it has become a tourist attraction for people who want to see the impact of Climate Change firsthand (gives a new twist on eco-tourism). According to an article in last week’s New York Times Magazine, Climate Change has turned the country of Mauritania into an uninhabitable desert. But see if anyone will let refugees from Mauritania breach their borders. If Climate Change refugees can’t even convince another country on Earth to take them in, then imagine how much trouble we will have as Climate Change refugees trying to convince a Martian to take us in (especially if we are forbidden to use the term “Climate Change refugees”). I don’t know anyone who speaks Martian. Cali wildfires could turn me into a Climate Change refugee any minute. While I don’t speak Martian, I’m learning sign language, which could prove useful in communicating with creatures from other planets, unless they have way more hands or arms than I do.

As if my hectic nine minutes of evacuation prep hadn’t prepared me enough for a real evacuation, I had the opportunity to stage a thorough practice just two days later when our area came under evacuation warning because of the Mendocino Complex Fire. This time, Ron and I ran a full-blown practice drill. We loaded up our cars and packed our bags. Fortunately, we didn’t actually need to evacuate. But we learned a lot from the drill. For instance, I put my grandmother’s fancy chair in my car, looked at how much space it took up, and then carried it back into the house (while Ron shook his head and wisely made no comment – we are still married). When I looked around my house to decide what to take with me on that day, I had a historical trauma flashback to the experience of my Jewish ancestors fleeing the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. I thought of my great-great grandmothers and great-great aunts snatching the Sabbath candlesticks from the shelf and wrapping them in a piece of lace as they ran to hop on the wagon. So I took my Sabbath candlesticks, my mother’s Seder plate, my menorah, and my mother’s Havdalah set. I discovered which possessions mean the most to me, and that given about 90 minutes, I could collect those possessions and put them in my car. I could do that if a fire strikes when I happen to be at home. If I’m not at home, I stand to lose everything. When my father heard that I keep our wills and advanced medical directives in my straw sewing basket, he suggested I think about getting a fireproof safe. (I have since copied my important documents and sent them to my son to keep offsite.)

While we were under evacuation warning, a friend in Oakland called to check up on us and he generously offered to let us put some things into a storage unit he rents. What a bizarre concept. The things that we most want to save from burning up are the things we hold most dear, so why would we want to leave them in a storage unit 100 miles away in Oakland? They are the things we want to have close to us and the things we need to have ready for use every day. I don’t want the photo albums of my children in Oakland, and it would be impractical for Ron to put his insulin in a storage unit anywhere. I couldn’t even leave my beloved deep-dish, well-seasoned, cast iron frying pan as far away as my car in the garage. Actually, I put it in the car, and then I had to bring it back into the house to cook dinner.

We did a good job on the evening of our evacuation drill. We had quickly managed to get organized and ready to flee. We even had the cats in the house where I could find them. But then I suddenly realized that we were all packed up and had no idea where we were going to evacuate to. So I called a friend who lives in a neighborhood not in danger from the fires to ask if we could stay with her and her husband if we indeed had to leave. She said absolutely, and she would alert their young Salvadoran housemate, named Fidel Castro, that we might turn up during the night. All set. If our house burns up we’ll move in with Fidel Castro.

CODA. I invite you to read my reflection on living in Climate Change, “Dark Mountain vs. Hearts Possible” (posted in 2014). Here is the link to that post, in which I share my belief in the power of narrative to impact real events and the future, even in the face of Global Warming. In case the stories we tell manifest the future we live, it’s a good idea to tell hopeful stories that promote positive outcomes, don’t you think?

I had planned to attach a photo of the burnt up landscape East of Highway 101 near my house, 

but then I decided enough images of devastation and ruin already.

 Instead I want to share a photo of my extraordinary, tall, luminous, purple purple delphiniums. 

I am grateful that my yard has not burned up so far.
(Photo by Ron Reed.)