After the Fire

 

I want to preface with the fact that everyone here is fine, and that, yes, I did title the post after a Modern Family episode. It's apropos. 

Yesterday dawned in typical March fashion, which is to say clear early, fading to gauzy clouds as afternoon approached; cool; impossibly wind. The wind here is so different from in-town wind. Gentle breezes there become gales here, moaning in the eaves, moving patio furniture, chafing faces until they're red and chapped. 

The horses were grazing in the front pasture, the cat was napping on the porch rail outside my window, and I was slogging my way through the last chapter of Lord Have Mercy III when I heard sirens. Not an uncommon occurrence. Sound travels far out here; there's always an ambulance or a cop car going somewhere. So one siren wasn't cause for alarm. But then it was two. And then three. And four...eventually, I lost count, because there were so many, and then, when I stepped outside, the clear sounds of men shouting, and what sounded a lot like a bulldozer, and the snapping of tree trunks. Then I saw the smoke: a thick, boiling black column of it just through the woods behind the chicken house. 

Fire. Fire close by. 

There is something deeply, viscerally terrifying about fire. It's instinctual, hardwired into every animal. The wind was blowing the smoke toward us, and the cats, the dogs, the horses - everything was nervy and unsettled, and coming to us humans for comfort, little of which I was able to provide as the panic slowly set in. Within the first twenty minutes of spotting the smoke, my mom and I had moved the horses to a farther pasture, and then hooked up the horse trailer, opened its doors, dropped the ramp, all ready to load up if necessary. After having watched footage of the California wildfires for years, and seeing the horrors of the evacuations, both successful and failed, we weren't going to take any chances. We were going to muscle the minis into the trailer dressing room if it came down to it. After a few tense hours of waiting, and a trip just down the road and around the corner to check the situation, the danger had passed...for us. 

The street takes a hard bend a few driveways down from ours, and doubles back on itself. A house on the backside of our property caught fire yesterday, early afternoon, and burned to the ground. The county responded quickly, and managed to contain the fire - which jumped the road and caught at the edge of the woods that back up to our farm. The forestry commission managed to smother the flames with a bulldozer, but if they hadn't...well, it doesn't bear imagining. 

I can't stop thinking about the poor family who lived there. Their home gone, all their things, their car, their children's toys. The Red Cross was on the scene by yesterday evening, and I know there will be a collection to contribute to. But it's one of those terribly sobering moments where you stop and think "it could have been me." Where your relief feels more like a stomachache and a throbbing head than anything happy or light. Just...life is short. Terrible things happen. Count your blessings. All of that. 

Feeling lucky today. Glad that I'm sitting here at my computer watching the horses graze and the cat nap on the porch rail. Wishing we could all be a little kinder to one another.