On wildfires and healing

I'm no stranger to trauma. Ever since the day I was born, it rode shotgun in the front seat, my ancestors wounds hugged my cells and their aches were my first language.

So many things that happened were dress rehearsals for surviving the Almeda fire, so many hurts were heaped upon me, and I had to figure out how to carry it, again and again, not knowing or understanding what was about to happen. The one salvation was clear, and true--I had to decide that I was going to be okay. Each time, my definition of "okay" changed, but the new life I found myself in, meant that every single day I had to figure out what I needed to do in order to inch closer to healing. The death of our son in August 1998, and feeling as though we lost him again when the tiny pile of his belongings were lost in the fire twenty-two years later, consumed me like flames, threatening my mental health, and leading to exacerbated medical issues that caused excruciating nerve damage, that ironically often feels like my feet are burning from the inside out. Still, I am okay, and often overwhelmed with gratitude for this beautiful life I have. I choose to be okay.

The thousands of people who are living through the terrible fires in Los Angeles are still numb. That numbness will protect them for now, but in the days, months and years ahead, they are finding themselves in this whole new, horrific life, a place where the touchstones of their past are ashes, and they'll struggle to see their future. Their homes were swallowed by flames, and their neighborhoods are gone. It is hard to find words for everything they've lost, because it's all so huge and it might include a loss of safety and trust in everything. Human lives have been lost, pets and wildlife are gone, and everything smells like smoke. For several weeks after the Almeda fire, smoke seemed to penetrate our clothes, the seats of the car, and it felt like our bodies had been drenched in it.

We lost approximately five square miles in Jackson County, Oregon in the Almeda fire in September 2020, and approximately 2,500 homes. Of the homes that burned 1,500 were manufactured homes that were scattered across 18 mobile home parks. In contrast, the four fires burning in Los Angeles are 60+ acres, more than 12,000 structures have been damaged, and dozens of people died. It's currently at 11% containment. It continues to grow, fueled by the Santa Ana winds, the same winds that took our everything.

A few days ago I was listening to news about the fires in Los Angeles County, and the reporter described how beautiful homes in stunning neighborhoods were reduced to rubble, and the photos they showed looked nearly identical to the photos of our obliterated mobile home parks after our fire. I don't remember anyone saying that our homes were beautiful, and many of them were 40-50 year old trailers that became twisted, melted metal, but my neighbors owned them free and clear. The white metal trellis where pink roses climbed against a neighbor's dwelling every summer was beautiful. Our neighbor Paul was a veteran, and he lived two doors down from us. His home had a beautiful deck where friends often gathered and shared stories. Our park was full of mature trees that drew in wildlife from Bear Creek. River otters, beavers, foxes, skunks, raccoons, bobcats, cougars, and black bears visited. Living at the edge of both the city, and a wild place was perhaps the most charming part of our neighborhood.

After our fire, my husband Jason and I visited the charred remains of our neighborhood twice a day for a couple of months without fail. We created a routine, because we were still missing pets, and we had to do everything we could to try to find them. The first few days, post fire, were filled with sights that still haunt me in my dreams. The charred, and unrecognizable bodies of animals who died in the fire. We buried them in a makeshift graveyard in the middle of a nearby field, and wondered if they were ours, or a neighbors. The tiny remains of our two, darling pet ferrets were buried out there too, right next to a surviving tree. Everything was reduced to ashes, bones, skeletons and ghosts of what used to be.

I remember the first time I saw anything that was still alive in our neighborhood, about four days after the fire. We were walking on a pathway at the edge of the creek, and suddenly something darted. It was a tiny lizard. I've never been so glad to see a reptile before, or since. That tiny glimpse of life fueled us. We walked through the park the following night, retracing steps we'd continuously taken. A light colored furry animal ran underneath the skeleton of a neighbor's truck. I sat down in ashes and slowly and gently began calling one of our cats, Fat Boy, who was 15 at the time of the fire. I had bottle raised him and his siblings all those years ago, and he was as bonded to me as anything I could have thought possible, and yet the trauma he'd experienced in the fire terrified him. It took about an hour of sitting there in the dark, softly talking to him, before he seemed to remember who I was. Miraculously, he was more or less, physically unhurt. His eyes were red and sore from smoke, and he was covered in soot, but he somehow managed to escape getting burned.

Other wins followed. A few days later, a small black cat called "Sparky" was waiting to be found on what's now the back porch of our current home. Sparky was soon reunited with her family, and my own kids were thrilled to learn that she had survived and was presumably reunited with her sibling, "Porkchop", as they knew them from their walks around the neighborhood before the fire.

One night, maybe a month after the fire, I remember walking the loop, and I looked up and saw how the moon was rising and it lit up the hills around us. I stood underneath the moon that night, and thought about all that was lost, and how this beauty filled this brand new space. I stood there feeling the tenacity that is carried within my cells, and the wonder of it all. The last few nights we've seen the full moon, a luminous wolf moon that holds the promise of healing, and fills the night sky over the fires that are still burning.

Photo of "Fat Boy", taken one day after he was found. We took turns lying down with him through the night, "holding paws" as we all needed to touch one another.