Out of the Fire

Gail Stark                                                                                June 3, 2016

BUTTE FIRE MEMOIRS: THE RETURN

Still living at our son’s small house with Hy as well as his assistants (Hy’s disabled) and Trooper, the guard dog tied to the outside stair railing, and Tippy, the outdoor cat unhappily and noisily confined to the inside. We felt adrift in an exotic and strange world of ambiguity and lack of bearing.

We were jolted back to reality with a phone call from our friend Mike, who told us that the blockade on West Murray Creek Road had been lifted.

Now, West Murray Creek Road is a long and arduous and barely maintained road from San Andreas to its ending at Whiskey Slide Road, the corner of our property. It winds up the side of a mountain to what in the past was a fire lookout station and then heads down hill toward Mountain Ranch. With long driveways branching off of West Murray Creek Road, numerous secluded home sites enjoyed the privacy and spectacular views the trees and elevation provided all year, each and every year.

So, we quickly started off eager to go to Mountain Ranch to see what had happened to our home, our property, our neighborhood. Having heard sobering descriptions we felt we were mentally prepared for the drive. Nothing, nothing could have prepared us for the magnitude of devastation we witnessed as we drove from San Andreas to the Lookout and back down to our corner. Only the black skeletal remains of the pine, oak, maple, fir and madrone remained - not a leaf - not a needle - not even a blade of grass remained. Bare darkened earth highlighted now exposed, once private roads which meandered across the dead land to secluded, now vanished homes. From canyon and gully to ridge tops the disaster rose and fell and rose again.

As we approached our corner we were shaken from the current drive as well as hopeful and apprehensive simultaneously. Both states proved accurate, for as we drove in our driveway we found our house standing there exactly as we had left it. Two pines and two liquid ambers near the front of the house stood as well, along with an old grandfather oak in the back. Our enormous relief quickly turned to horror as we looked up the driveway toward our well house. It was gone. Simply nothing remained except the metal corrugated roofing material which was lying on the ground and covered the footprint of the structure. There were no charred pieces of wall wood or beams. The building had literally vaporized, the fire had been so hot.

But, the well house could be replaced. Not true for the remainder of our twenty-two acres as every living thing was either badly burned or burned beyond any semblance of earlier life. We were horrified, sickened, disbelieving,

uncomprehending, in total shock. Our property, the home of the deer and fox and squirrels and turkeys and bluejays, and woodpeckers had been annihilated. The homes of the bees and ants and worms and more life forms than I ever knew lived there were nothing but tall black sticks and blackened earth. Again, not one single pine needle could be seen or blade of grass....all vaporized.

In the weeks and months and even now, nine months later, another difficulty for those of us whose houses were spared and whose property burned beyond recognition became apparent. We were finding it impossible to explain our profound grief, our sense of loss. “But, you have your house,” we would be told. The implication being that we were selfish, uncaring and unsympathetic to those hundreds whose houses had been burned down. “No, we say. Please, please, try to understand. We do have our houses, but we have lost our homes. Our homes were the house and the land and the trees and the wildlife which shared that particular piece of earth with us. We have lost our daily images. We have lost what has been our refuge-our place of safety and support. Our home, land and house, is forever compromised never to share its many life giving and life sustaining properties, never to whisper in the breeze or toss violently in a winter storm. Never to shelter a litter of fox kits or feel the small impact of a young squirrel as it lands on a branch, never to be the hideout for young children’s first club or be the place to show them the intricacies and layers of the life it fostered. We who lost our home, but retained our house chose the foothills precisely because of the variety and wonder of its intrinsic beauty. We wanted, yea, needed to have our spirits be near and interact with all the life present in the natural world. Yes, we have our houses, but we ache and hold a deep longing