Wildfire

Last month I said, "So much happened last month that I haven't been able to take a breath and write." This month, I wish I didn't have to say, "So much has happened in the past few months that I can barely breathe."

Because it is almost literally true. Friday morning I pulled out of our garage, into an eerie Halloween-orange light. Morning light is supposed to be blue and clean. Crisp. Bright. The light that morning was damp, hazy, sullied. And it was an unnatural orange. Not the golden hue of the golden hour, not the deepening amber of dusk. It was a nauseating, liquid plastic Halloween orange.

That is the light of massive fires.

We had seen it before... just this past July, with the terrifying Carr and Mendocino fires. But this time I could feel the smoke grazing against my throat as I drove Aria to school. She covered her face as she ran to her classroom, and a few hours later I received the email I knew would come: "We have been advised that all should stay indoors today." We used to have snow days on the East Coast when I was growing up. Now we have smoke days.

"I can barely breathe."

It is literally true for thousands of my fellow Californians directly impacted by these latest fires, just a few hours' drive north and a few more hours' drive south. In Thousand Oaks and Malibu there are the Hill and the Woolsey fires. The one up north is the Camp Fire, its name pulled already burning from a twisted irony of its origin: Camp Creek Road. Yes, this is how wildfires are named.

They're coming fast and furious now. Tubbs. Atlas. Nuns. Thomas. County. Ferguson. Carr. Mendocino. Hill. Woolsey. Camp. Just the most vicious, this past year alone.

I can't read any more accounts of people burning alive in their cars as they try to flee. I can't bear to watch another smartphone video taken from vehicles fleeing the inferno. Or see more pictures of house after house after car after building after neighborhood after entire city burned to the ground. I can't wrap my brain around the emotional and moral dissonance of happy pre-season ads playing before videos about the difference between fire whirls and firenadoes, or what a friend of mine, a captain at a local fire station, told me: one of Southern California fires was so hot it melted sand into glass.

And yet, those same articles recount stories of people pulling out into the opposing lane, taking their chances counting on the probability that no one is driving the other way, toward the fire. Of people abandoning stalled traffic and climbing down ravines to get to safety. Stories of incredible bravery, luck, courage, and determination to survive.

And so I read on, cheering on people I've never known, cheering on meteorologists who patiently explain why those insolent tweets coming from the White House blaming forest management are so, so wrong, cheering on the firefighters giving their one thousand percent, and sometimes their lives.

This time, we need to breathe together.