I came home from the islands, jetlagged, sunburned and disoriented. Driving into town was challenging. On the ridge I saw a small puff of smoke, almost like a sprite, it announced itself. So I pulled over to watch it, and within seconds it became a mushroom cloud.
The air is crisp and bright, a fall day. The vineyards are ablaze with color, yellow, red, and burgundy. Oat grasslands on the hillside stretch like tawny beasts to the horizon. And the canyons, dark with oak and chaparral. The column rises up like a cobra to the sky, dancing above the ridge-line where it hits an inversion layer and becomes a shining city. Billowing on the ground, rolling sideways as the fire gains traction. Everything is unseasonably dry at the end of October. Drought cycle.
I pull my camera out to document the plume, it’s ravenening its way across the canyon, it will consume so much land. Some guy in a big truck yells at me because I’m blocking the driveway to the doggie daycare. I point to the horizon and say look, speechless. He ignores me and continues to yell. Little does he know it’s going to be one of the worst fires in Northern California. Later we will call it the Kincade fire. So I start my car and drive towards Santa Rosa.
I pull my camera out to document the plume, it’s ravenening its way across the canyon, it will consume so much land. Some guy in a big truck yells at me because I’m blocking the driveway to the doggie daycare. I point to the horizon and say look, speechless. He ignores me and continues to yell. Little does he know it’s going to be one of the worst fires in Northern California. Later we will call it the Kincade fire. So I start my car and drive towards Santa Rosa.
Geyser Peak is dressed in smoke so thick it looks like a volcanic eruption. I turn around and head back home to pack when the evacuation warning comes. Not mandatory, thank God. It’s all a waiting game. See what happens. But the folks on Pine Flat Road won’t be as lucky.
The fire would not be assuaged, the fire fighter planes dump load after load of water and retardant on the hillsides, flocking everything in hot pink dresses hiked up over the thigh. I watch the Spirit of John Muir circle overhead, a supertanker so big, it has to fly back to Sacramento just to refuel. I have a prime ringside side seat to devastation. I sit mesmerized and I am overwhelmed. Not again is all I can say, not like the Tubbs fire, not again, but I know the drill.
We cheer when the fire fighter planes arrive, scouring the sky. They are lining up like models on a runway, taking turns, sexily weaving in and out of plumes of smoke and ash. Soon the hillsides are embroidered with flash fire and flames licking the air. An entire weather system is forming as if a storm had moved in but this is a fire storm not a rain storm. It’s moving too fast for anything escape from its hunger.
We cheer when the fire fighter planes arrive, scouring the sky. They are lining up like models on a runway, taking turns, sexily weaving in and out of plumes of smoke and ash. Soon the hillsides are embroidered with flash fire and flames licking the air. An entire weather system is forming as if a storm had moved in but this is a fire storm not a rain storm. It’s moving too fast for anything escape from its hunger.
The hunger of the fire, a voracious dragon crowns the rest of ridge, Geyser Ridge, how ironic. The geysers are letting off steam. The geothermal plant is in danger of being destroyed. How many people rely upon it for electricity, all of us. The entire north coast. It becomes nerve-racking trying to get the news. For some reason I am connected via a cellular tower and through Facebook we get the news, CalFire giving us updates. Ironic too that PG&E is responsible for this fire as well.
The fire rages on, devouring the brush in front of it, the fire reaches the oak trees of vulnerable age, the fire rages on, wiping out history with impunity. How fragile we are, how fragile life is, we are reduced to ashes and smoke. The valley has turned into a crematorium for which there is no escape. We cannot see the animals attempting to flee the fire, but we can imagine it, which is worse, because our imaginations cannot hold and encompass the power and the velocity of this wild fire, this fire storm.
The fire rages on, devouring the brush in front of it, the fire reaches the oak trees of vulnerable age, the fire rages on, wiping out history with impunity. How fragile we are, how fragile life is, we are reduced to ashes and smoke. The valley has turned into a crematorium for which there is no escape. We cannot see the animals attempting to flee the fire, but we can imagine it, which is worse, because our imaginations cannot hold and encompass the power and the velocity of this wild fire, this fire storm.
We have barely recovered from the Tubbs fire that incinerated all in its path, a visiting wildfire from Napa. Vineyards the color of fire, grapes ready for the harvest, no good no, smoked grapes. Adds a whole new dimension to Fume blanc. If the fire is in the open, the smoke is a lacy white heat, but when it burns buildings, it is a dark rage that threatens to rob the sky of light until we are all left in darkness. So ironic to be in the dark during a time of fire.
I’m writing about one fire, but truth be known, our lives have been radically altered by fire, for years now, an afterthought of the drought. The prolonged drought that naysayers of climate change say doesn’t exist. But it’s not their homes and their lives being affected by fire. My friend lost his father during the Tubbs fire, it swept across the gap into the hills and turned down Mark West Canyon into a fiery prison, the relentless fire change the lives of so many. We have ringside seats to PTSD.
The fire was an angry beast, angry for what we have done, and what we continue to do to the land. The fire was a dragon, well schooled in the physics of pyrotechnics. The fire was seeking revenge for all our transgressions, we who built houses on the grasslands and the hillside will be cleansed by fire.
The fire was an angry beast, angry for what we have done, and what we continue to do to the land. The fire was a dragon, well schooled in the physics of pyrotechnics. The fire was seeking revenge for all our transgressions, we who built houses on the grasslands and the hillside will be cleansed by fire.
I learned a new word, emberfire, as I watch bits of ash and debris rain down upon me, my car, though I am miles away. A spark was once the needle from a Douglas fir tree lands in my palm, a small fiery kiss, the other one still retains the shape of an oak leaf, the tree long since gone. An age of trees has disappeared, gone up in smoke and the dragon is breathing, the dragon is dreaming, the dragon is guarding its treasure, counting its wealth, its treasure of fire.
You must unhome, you must unbecoming, the fire says this, and the dragon fans the flame with large leathery wings. The wind shrieks and howls like a tortured animal, metaphor for what is happening in real time, for too many of us sentient beings, whether snake or bird or human.
One woman lives because she jumped into her swimming pool with all of her belongings. You see there was no escape route from the cul-de-sac that came with an exclusive price tag. She arranged her Spode dishes in the shallow end of the pool and used a straw to breathe through when the fire ate her house. The danger of scorched lungs very real.
I remember one summer during a glassblowing class, holding the rod laden with molten glass. I took in a big gather and I swung the pipe to enlarge it and as I blew into the mouth of the pipe to fill the belly of the bottle, I was filled with an unreasonable fear that I would forget, that there were so many protocols to remember. What if I forgot and breathe in the wrong way, in instead of out? The super heated air would make short shrift of my lungs.
You must unhome, you must unbecoming, the fire says this, and the dragon fans the flame with large leathery wings. The wind shrieks and howls like a tortured animal, metaphor for what is happening in real time, for too many of us sentient beings, whether snake or bird or human.
One woman lives because she jumped into her swimming pool with all of her belongings. You see there was no escape route from the cul-de-sac that came with an exclusive price tag. She arranged her Spode dishes in the shallow end of the pool and used a straw to breathe through when the fire ate her house. The danger of scorched lungs very real.
I remember one summer during a glassblowing class, holding the rod laden with molten glass. I took in a big gather and I swung the pipe to enlarge it and as I blew into the mouth of the pipe to fill the belly of the bottle, I was filled with an unreasonable fear that I would forget, that there were so many protocols to remember. What if I forgot and breathe in the wrong way, in instead of out? The super heated air would make short shrift of my lungs.
Blowing glass is a form of playing with matches only there are no matches and you’re not the landscape attempting to escape the fire. My cheeks grew numb, my lips cracked, my throat parched. I think of that woman submerged in the pool, moving like a leviathan into the deep end where the water was cooler, the shallow end was warmer than a bathtub.
She had to move slowly not to exert herself because then she would take in the fire‘s wrath, one breath too deep into her lungs. And she did survive the fire. How long did she stay underwater, most of the night. Her husband was not so lucky.
I couldn’t imagine going down to the lower depths like that, Captain Ahab walking the plank, where the wilderness of death awaited with open arms. Because to surface was to die. You can’t imagine the sacrifice, you can’t imagine how the gods arose to murder sleep and shadows danced and rose up like a swarm of zombies.
Loneliness and desire are not the same as banishment or abandoned dreams. A prisoner of regret mixed with static dreams and the strange desire of fire unfulfilled until all is gone, leveled down to bare rock, even the soil burned. Who knew that loam would burn?
We write to-do evacuation lists, and stage our belongings in order of preciousness, so as not to be discouraged, as the punishment of stasis is equal to death. Nowhere left to run. We watch a hill turn into an inferno, hidden behind the sparks is an enormous fan dancer, like a burlesque striptease, the denuded hills, and the crackling sound of leaves burning from branches.
We write to-do evacuation lists, and stage our belongings in order of preciousness, so as not to be discouraged, as the punishment of stasis is equal to death. Nowhere left to run. We watch a hill turn into an inferno, hidden behind the sparks is an enormous fan dancer, like a burlesque striptease, the denuded hills, and the crackling sound of leaves burning from branches.
Leaves transforming into flocks of angry red birds searching for a place to land, another satellite fire to ignite. A cluster of red shift galaxies and a glint of bone, a crescendo reaching me for the fire of stars, the music of the spheres, the sting of the sirens and the howling of coyotes in the canyons. Bone and ivory and ash. We wait for the dawn to paint the sky with hope.
1 comment:
This is such a tragic thing to have to write about. Stunning imageryđ You continue to inspire me.
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