Every place has a type of natural disaster that haunts its residents. My mom, who lives in Oregon, wonders when the big earthquake or volcanic eruption will hit Portland. We go to the coast and see signs for tsunami evacuation routes. My dad, who lives in the mountains, has what every mountain dweller in Colorado has, a nagging fear that lightning will strike a dry pine tree, and acres of forested land will burn up in the blink of an eye. I live on the plains, so I've seen these fires from afar, too many to count. I've heard of people who've lost everything in a wildfire. The thing is, you never think it is going to happen to someone you love or to a house you know well.
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| The '72 bus and the side of my dad's house. That's not the real color... fyi |
It was a typical Saturday. I had read the paper, done chores, worked out, and done my nails. Then I checked Twitter and saw the Boulder Camera's tweet about a fire up by Beaver Meadows entrance station at RMNP. At first I didn't think about it. It didn't sound severe and I had already heard so much horrible news about the High Park fire near Fort Collins. Now that fire is a huge beeyotch, it has consumed close to 200 private homes and thousands of acres of forested land. The devastation is something the rest of us Coloradoans have been acutely aware of, donating money and goods and lending helping hands where needed. I clicked on the article. It said that the fire started at 1600 High Drive... hrm... my dad's neighborhood, and that the neighborhood had been evacuated. I knew my dad and his partner Mary were out hiking for the day, but Harry, my dad's housemate didn't answer the phone. No one home...
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| Dad walking a friend's dogs in the neighborhood. The houses in this photo are probably gone. | | | | | |
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I was headed up to Estes Park anyway. A friend of mine was getting married to a guy I still needed to meet, I was going to catch up with a bunch of good friends, and I had this great dress and killer shoes. So I shoved all that in a bag, called my cousin who lives in Estes and we started a command center of our own; calling Mary's cell phone, checking the computer for the latest information. I sped up to Estes and I remember driving past the skydivers at the airport and thinking, "What the hell? Why are you skydiving when I can't reach my dad and I don't know if his house is gone." Don't you just love mustering righteous indignation at people living their lives while you're in turmoil? When I got to my cousin's, we drove down to the place where evacuees were gathering and Mary called. She and my dad had just arrived to chaos and not been able to get up to the house. Dana and I drove over to them and we waited... and watched. We watched helicopters dump water on the smoke that seemed perilously close and horribly ominous.
And then we ate a little bit. Dad made jokes like how now he could finally move in with me and live in my basement (which is not funny, ha ha so much as funny, hell no). Our waiter was from Lithuania and brought the wrong order and I started to feel like I was dreaming. This wasn't really happening, right? The fire would only get a few vacation cabins and it would stop and my dad would be able to go back to his house that night. Then we went up a hill and looked across into my dad's neighborhood.
We found dad's street, and the houses down the hill from his house. And then my dad said, "Well, it might have gotten the house," and we all froze. He took some photos and we squinted across and we saw the peaks of my dad's roof above the trees... but we weren't sure. We wanted to believe that it was there. I started to think about all the stuff that was in the house. The painting of my dad on Marroon Bells, the computer with all his photos, the giant map of RMNP that had red lines all over it where he had hiked, everything is replaceable, but there are lots of things he couldn't easily replace. Then there are memories of people and the fun times we have had at the house. My dad calls his house "Basecamp" because a lot of people visit at any given time. I actually have to book time in advance if I want to stay there.
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| The day Lucy met the elk. |
At the end of the day, we went to a briefing for the evacuees and the list of structures lost was released. And they didn't read dad's address. His house had been saved by incredibly skilled firefighters, helicopter pilots and police officers who worked hard and braved smoke and fire.
There was relief for what was saved and profound sadness for those who lost everything. Losing a house cannot be assuaged by insurance, your home is an extension of yourself, and good, innocent people lost the very safe place that they had created. The Red Cross set up a shelter at the high school and people dispersed to be with family and friends and neighbors.
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| Smoke from the High Park fire over Lake Estes |
After the stress dissipates, your body stops tensing, everyone is safe and you settle into a kind of sleep, you review. I had to say things to myself like, "that just happened" and "what just happened?" I couldn't believe it was so close and so real. This year has truly been a game changing year for me. Everything I had previously done, the ways I had adopted and settled into like a warm blankie took a 180 (there are some back blog posts about this). And this change is sometimes subtle, sometimes not so much, but it seeps in and around and suddenly, you like asparagus... like who knew that would happen?? What I noticed about my response to this situation was my lack of paralyzing anxiety and panic about the unknown. Anxiety was a nice blankie for me to hide under for a long time, but it didn't really serve me at all. The unknown is coming for all of us, we just don't know anything about what the next day, hour or minute will bring. Sometimes it comes as a beautiful surprise, and sometimes a horrible tragedy. And the kicker about both sides of that coin is that life keeps going on around you; the skydivers will just keep skydiving. I wish I had some profound, deeply metaphorical Bob Dylan song to share with you here, but the one I keep coming back to is the chorus of Ok Go's "Here It Goes Again":
Just when you think that you're in control,
just when you think that you've got a hold,
just when you get on a roll,
here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again.
Oh, here it goes again.
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| Sunset from my dad's porch |
