Fire on the Mountain

We celebrated my daughter's 16th birthday with a camping trip to a Northern California lake. There were seven of us in all. Our immediate family and a couple of her friends.

We forgot newspaper to light the barbecue. It wasn't a problem.  The fallen eucalyptus leaves and abundance of twigs of varying sizes from the shady oaks and sycamores that surrounded the shore provided a quick way to get the coals going.

They lit up like the head of a matchstick. I reflected briefly on commonality of severe wildfires in California now, and on my friends and fellow citizens who had lost homes in the Camp, CZU, and Woolsey fires. 

Campfires were forbidden at this campground. Which is a bummer when you're camping. But, we'd get by without one. 

We swam, paddle boarded, and blew up an inflatable boat that was on its last legs, giving a quick ride out to the middle of the lake, and a humorous ride back that ended with the the occupants deep in the water and pulling a sad sack of yellow and black plastic that ended up in the dumpster. The kids ate ice cream from the camp store.

We grilled some hot dogs and ate them with potato chips for dinner. A perfectly ripe watermelon made dessert. We sat with our feet in the water and looked at the Milky Way. Someone spotted a shooting star.

We all stayed up late. I sauntered onto my cot and into my sleeping bag around midnight. I could still hear the kids laughing and talking at 2 a.m. 

Around 4 a.m. I unzipped the tent and stepped outside to relieve myself. The kids were in another larger tent about ten yards away to my back. One of the boys, it seemed, was on a similar schedule as mine. I finished. He kept going. And going. And going. I almost chuckled at the Austin Power's rivaling event. Boy, that kid had to go! Then it dawned on me. Something else was going on.

Could the sound be the crackle of fire?

I turned and could see the sun coming up on the horizon, or that's what I thought for a quick moment, but immediately rationalized the angle was off. I was looking more to the north than to the east. The sun came up much farther to the right. 

My eyesight is bad. Everything was blurred as my body came alive with adrenaline. I quickly unzipped the tent and grabbed by glasses. 

I saw fire. A wildfire. It was on the hillside maybe a hundred yards away. Maybe less. 

I spoke loudly to my wife who poked her head out of the tent and the urgency in her voice caused the adrenaline in my veins to infuse my entire being with, what in retrospect, I can only call a controlled panic. Contradictory perhaps, but that's what it felt like.

My body was compelled into action, while my brain rode along with white knuckles. 

"Call 911. I'll get the kids," she said. I'll never forget those words. It hadn't even occurred to me, and I'm still flabbergasted as to why. It seemed so obvious. But it hadn't even occurred to me. All I wanted to do was get the kids out of there, and fast.

I called 911 as we moved to the car. One of the kids was shaking. We reassured them. We're safe. We just have to go. 

"What about our stuff?"

"It doesn't matter. We may lose it. Or maybe it'll be here when we get back. What's important is that we get out of here."

We rolled down our windows and honked our horns, trying somehow to be desperately and impossibly polite while warning the few other campers (remarkably few, thankfully, as it was a weekday) that we did not mean to alarm them, but there was fire at the far edge of the campground.

CalFire trucks, lights flashing, moving at the speed limit but with sirens silent, passed us as we made our way out. It had a strangely calming affect. Wow, they came fast! In what struck me as a bizarre time to reflect on it, the memory of the EMT's arriving while my Dad was having a stroke and my Mom circled the room in a complete panic came back to me vividly. The medical professionals were so calm, so normal, and it made everything feel okay. They were rational. They made eye contact with me. They explained things. They spoke to my Dad betraying no sense of crisis with the tones of their voices.

They were trained.

We ended up down near the post office and convenience store in the small town twenty minutes from the campground. There wasn't anything else there. Two gas pumps operated by the convenience store. Aged and weathered signs outside advertised live bait and beer.

My mouth was dry. I offered everyone water. Inexplicably and unconsciously, I had grabbed the three gallon spouted water jug from the picnic table as I went toward the car. 

An hour later CalFire had the fire contained and we were back in our campsite. Smoke hung heavy in the air as the sunrise shone on the charred ground revealing just how close the fire was, and the still burning ridge line showing how much farther back it was now. 

Should we stay? How long will the smoke last? Will it be better at the other end of the lake? 

Still driven by the traces of adrenaline and without much discussion, we operated in a kind of hive mind and everyone started breaking camp.

We drove to the nearest Black Bear Diner and had an absolutely enormous breakfast. The waitress was friendly. Local. Had kids of her own. Talked to all those at our table. Nobody talked about the fire. We talked about baseball and river rafting and the friends the kids hoped to have in their classes in the coming school year.

Back at home, exhausted and unable to sleep that night. I marveled at my state of mind -- the clarity to evacuate, taking action without thinking, and the lack of awareness to call 911. Did I even do the right thing? Did I cause unnecessary panic. The fire was contained in an hour. 

I checked my phone. Outbound call 4:21 a.m. I searched CalFire records. Fire reported at 4:22 a.m.  Okay, maybe I prevented something more serious. The fire was close. Unreported, who knows what would have happened. Guilt lingered that it hadn't occurred to me to call, quickly replaced with an infusion of gratitude that my wife had the presence of mind to direct me to do so. 

On my first work call of the next day, someone mentioned fires in Maui. Bad fires. "Lahaina is gone. Even the Banyan Tree." The images were horrific. Hundreds were missing. 

What could have been at the campground? I'm glad I'll never know.

In Maui, three weeks later, the Banyan Tree near Lahaina shows signs of life.