Out of the Fire

Gail Stark                                                                 June 1, 2016

BUTTE FIRE MEMOIRS THE BEGINNING

On Wednesday, September 9, 2015, my husband’s eightieth birthday, we were at home busily engaged in preparations for a three day birthday celebration/family reunion. Children, grandchildren and their families were flying in from three different states in anticipation of a Friday of reconnecting, visiting, swimming, games and barbecuing, a Saturday evening patio gala complete with dear life-long friends, caterer, photographer, music and starry skies, and, to top it all off, a lovely brunch for all on Sunday under the arbor of our favorite restaurant.

Funny, I no longer remember how we learned of a fire which had started across the Mokelumne River in Amador County near the city of Jackson. Since that site was many miles away it caught our attention, but raised no mental alarms.

However, that evening at dusk as a friend and his cousin, a firefighter from the Bay Area, were helping us set up additional lighting we could see smoke in the sky. The fireman said, “I don’t like the looks of that. I’m going back, get my stuff and, then, I’m out of here!”

We thought he was over reacting!

By the next morning, Thursday, September 10, 2016, the situation had become threatening. Our daughter-in-law and her eldest daughter were driving to Mountain Ranch with a truck loaded with boxes of decorations and masses of fresh flowers for the celebration. We faced a dilemma. I vividly recall talking with Bill in the family room. We were trying to decide, do we cancel the entire weekend after months of planning? Should we call Susan and tell her not to come?

And that, as I look back, was the beginning of the downward spiral which still, nine months later, surrounds and permeates our daily lives and our dark of night thoughts.

We called. She and Katie were on the road already. She said they were coming anyway.

Ironically, I went to town to the local market for what I can simply not imagine at this point, but I met Susan and Katie there. Why they had stopped is another mystery. They had been watching the sky as they drove nearer and nearer and were in disbelief by the time they arrived in Mountain Ranch. We three looked at the eerie sky agreeing to head home immediately.

We didn’t know what action to take. The sky was ever darkening as the minutes passed. An unearthly light illuminated the towering pines. Should we stay? Should we go? Go? Evacuate? Evacuate, an almost incomprehensible thought.

Leave? Leave our twenty-two acres of lush, towering, protecting pines and fir and cedar. Leave the two hundred year old oaks which housed the native birds and fed the squirrel and deer their bountiful acorns every fall? Leave the home we so lovingly built and enhanced for over forty years? Leave a place which harbored the heart and soul of three (with the birthday celebration - four) generations of our family?

However, when warm, blackened oak leaves three inches in diameter fell from the sky, when the sun was obscured by smoke and the sky turned a menacing almost black color we made the decision.

Fueled by a sense of the unknown, of fear, of urgency and of sadness we each, grandfather, grandmother, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, began loading the daily lives and family history, mostly precious, some not so precious - just necessary- into our vehicles.

Susan dumped all the flowers and several containers of party decorations on the garage floor refilling them with heirloom items from the house, Katie, at twenty-one years, gathered with quiet purpose and grace my jewelry and personal items not letting her own emotions interfere with her somber mission.

And, me? What did I do? I’m actually not sure. I think I emptied the safe, I know I was in motion, making immediate decisions - what to take—what to leave; however, as I write I find a blank until my SUV held, shivering in the back, our huge white Anatolian goat guard dog from our ranch property five miles away and our orange manx loudly protesting being crammed into an ill fitting cat carrier.

I don’t know why not, but we were never told by any type of authority personnel to evacuate; so, by our own determination we took what we could carry of our lives in a car, a truck and an SUV. When we drove out the driveway we couldn’t look back for that “one last image” because we needed all our driving skill and composure as we entered a situation which was beyond weird.

We joined the literally non-stop chain of people, animals, cars, motorcycles, horse trailers, and trucks of disparate ages and conditions, all moving slowly, single file with headlights on down the only road leading away. Canopied by the now black sky which seeped a diabolical light we, the escapees, the mourners, put our sadness and grief on hold —buried somewhere deep only to surface later as confusion, forgetfulness, quick temper, unexplainable fatigue, high blood pressure, anxiety and insomnia.

But, that late afternoon only thirty-six hours after the Butte fire sparked miles and miles away our neighborhood fled before its incendiary onslaught.