In Fire Season

(If you are tired of hearing about fires, you might want to skip this one. Because it’s pretty much all anyone is thinking about around here. Well. Fires and also the Covid and the insane gubernatorial recall election that surely, never, ever in a million years could pass, right? Because to remove a lawfully elected governor with someone that most of us have never heard of would be beyond terrible. Of course, I also assured my son over and over again that Donald Trump would NEVER be elected president. So apparently I do not actually know what  can and cannot happen. Pray for Gavin Newsom, friends. Nobody is perfect (though I like him and think he’s done the best he could with the times that we are living in), but the alternates are beyond chilling. That is all I have to say about that. Now. On to the fires. Or not. Up to you.)

The sky is tricky again today.

(It has been tricky a lot lately).

It is grey and overcast and looks like rain.

If only that were true.

But there are no rain clouds here. The sky is heavy with smoke from the Caldor Fire which erupted in El Dorado County, a county which borders Placer County where I live, on August 15 and has since destroyed 650 structures and burned more than 150,000 acres. That’s 234 square miles. More than 3,000 personnel are fighting the fire. It is moving toward Lake Tahoe; new evacuation orders are issued nearly every day.

Here is some video from a local news station of smoke from the fire: Caldor Fire .  It gives you an idea of what we’ve been dealing with, although this was taken close to the fire and is worse than what we’ve had here.

Even so, the smoke has affected air quality around the region for days now. It’s made it so that the children at our local elementary school can’t play outside; it cancelled the first football game of the season at my son’s high school. Ash from the fire drifted our way and coated my car with a thin layer of grime.

Last week, I wrote that sometimes it has all started to feel like a little much, and that I wasn’t sure I had the oom-papa now to make it to “Camp Back to School,” which I wrote so optimistically about here:  “Camp Back to School”   Which is sad, because I love the idea of “Camp Back to School.” It helps me be so productive! Instead, I had to sign up for Camp “What Do You Need?”“  At “Camp What Do You Need?” you are allowed to rest in the middle of the day and read your book for as long as you want. You give yourself a lot of grace and realize that your “to-do” list will still be there tomorrow, and that today, it is fine if you do nothing much at all.  Because of the fires and the fact that you cannot see the sun or the mountains in the distance or the trees across the way.

This week turned out to be another “Camp What Do You Need?” week. How long am I going to be hanging out there?  Maybe for the rest of fire season, friends.

Because there was another fire this week, one that broke out in Grass Valley, a few towns over from us, which was serious enough to send out another round of “immediate evacuation notices” to cell phones around the region. I didn’t get one, but my son did. I tell you, these alerts are most unsettling. Thankfully, the fire department knocked that fire out at only 59 acres, and no structures were destroyed.

That was the best news of the week.

But the Caldor fire is still raging.

We have been bathing in smoke around here, which is obviously not such a good thing for our health. There is also the emotional toll of constantly being a little on alert, because we know that for the next few months, we will continually be just a breath away from having our phones sound another evacuation warning, if not for us, then for our neighbors.  My phone’s weather app just notified me that my region is under a “Fire Weather Watch” for Monday and Tuesday. Which is a little funny, because it seems like the fires are breaking out regardless of the weather, even when a “Fire Weather Watch” has not been activated. Apparently, all weather these days is “Fire Weather Watch” weather. Mostly, there is deep sadness when I think about what that smoke actually is. It is not just a random, annoying substance: it is trees and wildlife habitat, houses and places we love.  There is much grief here, in fire season.  It is weighing on all of us, I think. And we still have months to go.