#this is all the same soviet union game of setting fires everywhere as many as possible to overwhelm world order.

[dcnativegal]

Fire

Originally, I wrote about fire in July. It’s now September, and fire season in Oregon got so much worse. The fire called Eagle Creek was started by giggling 15 year  throwing firecrackers into a dry patch in the Columbia River Gorge: it became Oregon’s second largest fire, second only to the Chetco Fire on the southern western coast. Since the Eagle Creek Fire is close to Portland, and Multnomah Falls, it became national news, and maybe also because it was started by giggling teenagers.

I’m used to smog and fog on the east coast, but not smoke all summer and everywhere. Breathing smoke, smelling wood fire, has become a normal thing. I wondered if this is unusual and natives of Eastern Oregon tell me that it surely is. Apparently all the rain and snow over the winter encouraged a great growth of grass, referred to as fuel in fire lingo.

 Today is Sunday, September 9, 2017, and it feels as though the planet is having convulsions, tossing about its human parasitic invaders. Hurricane Irma is the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever, and it’s about to slam into Florida, after flattening Caribbean Islands. The biggest evacuation of that state, ever. Irma was preceded by Harvey, which basically drowned most of Houston, the USA’s 4th largest city. There was an earthquake, over 8 on the scale, that Clara felt in Guatemala, off the coast of Mexico, that hasn’t killed the huge number in the thousands that the earthquake caused 20 years ago there. But it’s bad. First rescue, then salvage.

And then there’s fire. Everywhere in the west, from Canada south to Utah. A flame.

From July:

On Saturday, July 8, a group of visitors from the wet part west of the Cascades was shooting some explosive, for fun, and set off a wildfire. This in the town of Summer Lake, just north of Paisley and south of Christmas Valley and Silver Lake. I’d just driven past that area 2 hours before the fire on my way west. First it was 600 acres, then 3,000, and finally, 6,000. As of July 14, it was 90% contained. Unlike hurricanes, there isn’t a list of names that one runs through to name it. It’s based on location. This was the Ana Fire, named after a reservoir.

Fire is not something I’ve grown up with as a persistent danger. A nuclear bomb landing on the Nation’s Capital was an abstraction and pretty scary to contemplate, but a decimated DC was only an idea, until 9/11 when a plane hit the Pentagon and another plane was unaccounted for before the passengers made it crash in Pennsylvania, killing themselves and the hijackers, while saving however many DC residents and tourists. Fire is an annual fear. A daily thing to prevent in the summer months. We, the fine people of Lake County, know what to do and what not to do. Don’t idle your engine over tall grass. Don’t burn trash until it’s officially okay to do that. Don’t pitch a cigarette anywhere. Campfire? Ha!

But then there are two kinds of knuckleheads. The kind that shoot explosives for sport, in the Oregon Outback, when they think they’re still somehow in the soggy Western part of the state. The other kind is the arsonist. Last summer’s fire that nearly consumed Paisley was set intentionally. That fire is called the Withers Fire, named after the family who owns the land it was set on, one of the long-resident, stalwart families of ranchers in Lake County. That knucklehead has been identified, but apparently there was some inter-agency foolishness, and someone went on vacation after securing some evidence, and now there’s no way to indict the dude. The Western Oregon knuckleheads are known, and although they did not intentionally cause the Ana Fire, they are liable. Financially, they are screwed.

I watched a 90-minute video of a community meeting that the firefighting agencies put together. I was fascinated, and will continue to be slightly obsessed with the whole matter of fire, now that I am in the line of it, so to speak. A woman from some agency ran the meeting, introduced all the people, mostly men, from many agencies. I will get familiar with them all over time. The designation of how serious a fire it was, who fought what when, the airplanes and helicopters, the hotshot firefighters, the cause and the legal repercussions, the backburning, all of it was gone over. A woman who sounded like a reporter asked questions to get it all down correctly on paper. There was scattered applause for the fine work that was done, with no loss of human life; only a shack and a hunting cabin burned. Now instead of watching Russian car crashes on youtube, or pimples being popped in a sterile environment, I can watch videos of fire, firefighting, and community meetings. (My actual youtube obsession is knitting and crochet techniques. Truly. I must be a menopausal chubby woman. Indeed, I am. They are riveting. Back to fire.)

It is a sad sight to drive by and see perky houses intact, in a sea of blackened, denuded land.

I am also learning to associate something that was very pleasant and a great relief in DC--the summer thunderstorm—with fire. In Paisley, a thunderstorm means lightning strikes, and thus, lots of little fires that can turn into big ones. There are several fires in Lake and Klamath counties right now, including one near enough to Tank Springs that Valerie drove up there to keep an eye out for her beloved family plot up there, and watch the firefighters. All is apparently safe, for now. I have to associate thunder and lightning with fire and possible devastation. This is a world class bummer, I can tell you. I wonder if I’ll get used to that.

Having lived in Washington DC for 56 years, I shared with all the residents the same kind of primal fear, of getting nuked by the Soviet Union. Until the Soviet Union was no more. And then it was ‘terrorism’. And the scary possibility of attack came true on September 11, 2001. I was at work, staring at the Washington Post web site, procrastinating, when I saw the very odd picture of a plane pointing toward the World Trade Center and about to hit it. Within minutes, the entire staff was watching television. Shortly after both planes hit New York, the one plane hit at the Pentagon. I got through to my then husband, who went to get the children from their elementary school that was exactly 12 blocks from the Capitol building. He scooped up some other kids from our neighborhood after reaching their parents, and held a kind of camp. I told him not to let them watch TV. In downtown DC there were a lot of sirens, and rumors about truck bombs at the State Department 12 blocks from us. The White House and Congress was evacuating to an undisclosed location.  My job’s office location was 6 blocks from the White House. We heard about the fourth plane and knew it was headed for either the Capitol building or the White House. We were all relieved to hear it had crashed in Pennsylvania because it was indeed pointed toward D.C.: I am eternally grateful to those passengers, who would have died wherever they crashed, but saved a big swath of the nation’s capital by going down in a rural area instead, not killing anyone but themselves. And the Saudi Arabian hijackers.

Eventually, I took the subway home, although I could have walked the 4 miles. The Metro was deserted by 3pm. It had been a devastating day: all sense of security and predictability blown away by the planes.

Fire season is all summer long, every summer. I now know how to keep track of fires on which web sites. I know what that yellowish haze means: smoke. I know that the most up to date information for Paisley can be found on our virtual community bulletin board called “For Sale in Paisley.”  You can buy a horse, a truck, cowboy boots, and second-hand clothes. You’ll also find information about stray dogs, weird weather, home games at the school gym, which internet companies are having trouble, and which fires are burning nearby.  

I will get used to this.

And I know what I’ll try to rescue: Val will take care of her stuff.

·     I’ll get my cat and cat food and litter.

·     My journals, kept continuously since college, which fill a trunk. They are kind of heavy. So only if I can.

·     My wallet. Phone, computer, chargers, c-pap machine. All my medicines. There are a lot of them.

·     A backpack full of jars of apple sauce and protein bars. A big water bottle.

·     My kids’ dad got all the photo albums, and that’s really fine, they are for our children. I have a couple with pictures of my ancestors. I can fit them all into a suitcase.

·     And my latest knitting projects. My needles and hooks.

·     Lots of size 11 underwear. I’m a big girl, and I need my big girl panties. Two pants, tee shirts, a sweatshirt. Since it is summer I’d need to high tail it, don’t need much. One pair of sneakers, 6 pairs of socks.

·     Would I have the luxury to be this selective? Beats me.

 My safety is tied up in my fellow Paisley residents, and I trust them. We will survive whatever befalls.

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."                          

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ