On Summer Solstice I woke up very early to drop off Ann and River at the Airport for the first flight out of town. They were going to go visit family across the country. I had a week to myself and I was looking forward to extra downtime and connection with nature.

That very morning I took a drive up into the mountains to visit the local wildlife and have some quality time away from the homestead. It was a beautiful way to celebrate solstice morning. I enjoyed beautiful vistas and countless wildflowers.

I returned home in early afternoon as the day was really beginning to heat up. After lunch I turned on some garden irrigation and I was about to settle in at the computer where it was cooler to get some work done when I saw orange ground outside.

Orange ground… My body instantly knew what that meant. Smoke filtered sunlight. It was a surprise because we hadn’t had any local or even regional wildfires yet this season and we hadn’t yet experienced smokey skies yet this season. And yet there it was.

I looked up and saw a single column of dense smoke coming from behind the mountains behind our home.

My phone was buzzing. The Watch Duty wildfire app was notifying me about a new fire in the next valley over the hills that is 1/2 acre in size. It had just started.

OK I didn’t have to panic, its local but its not in our neighborhood. Next thing I know my phone buzzes again. The firefighters are on scene but the fire is now 30 acres in size.

My phone keeps buzzing and now its also messages from neighbors on our local WhatsApp emergency chat group trying to make sense of the fire.

I am sitting at my desk but I am not looking at my computer. My attention is between the smoke and my phone. I’m glued there trying to absorb the information that’s coming in.

Now the fire is at 60 acres. Now the fires is 100 acres. More messages between neighbors.

And then silence. The power goes out precisely when I wanted it the most. I no longer had updates but I could see the smoke still rising in the same spot behind the mountains behind our house.

I immediately ran out side to turn off the irrigation so that our water lines wouldn’t get drained. Our well pump is up the hill and our home is downhill from there. Those pipes coming down from our well hold some water and I consider it a bit of extra emergency water besides what we have stored in our home.

Our property is one neighbor away from BLM land and that hillside is steep and littered with decades of deadwood. But that’s not my concern at the moment because I know the fire is in the next valley over.

Still I lost my communication and I want to know how the fire is growing and if the firefighters are able to slow it down, which way its moving, etc.

So I pickup the landline and call a neighbor. Phew the landline still works! I have a printout of many of our neighbors’ phone numbers on a clipboard by the phone. I called a few neighbors to check on them and everyone was doing well. One of them has a small in home generator and still has internet access. He let me know there were no new updates yet.

I decided to start packing up some of our valuables. If nothing else this would be a good drill should we ever need to bug out of our home.

The afternoon is growing long now and getting into evening. Finally I receive an automated phone call that we are on level 1 notice for evacuation. There are three levels: 1: Get Ready, 2: Be Set and 3: Go.

Between watching the window and calling my neighbor I am now taking packing more seriously. With the valuables packed I am now adding other essentials. Underneath my list of neighbor phone numbers is a list of things to pack should evacuation arise.

Aside from valuables the list mostly comes down to survival essentials for 3 days. It also includes things like gloves and fire extinguisher.

I am feeling calm and collected but I also appreciate having the list to go down so that I don’t have to think very hard, which takes more time and energy. I am conscious of the energy and time of each thought that goes through my mind and I don’t really know how much time I have before a potential evacuation.

As I pack some essentials I am checking the window and checking in with a few neighbors via our landline. The power is still out. The fire has now grown over 100 acres based on the latest update.

Now its early evening, the sun has set behind the tall hills to our west and the landscape is shaded. Its less hot outside but still lots of indirect light. It is solstice afterall.

I look over to the less urgent side of the sky and see the moon has risen. It is the biggest brightest moon I have seen in a while. I stop for a moment to admire it and dedicate part of myself to be present with the beauty of that moon, no matter how brief the moment was. I don’t stop to dwell with the moon but I still hold her in my heart as I did in that brief moment.

Its evening now, on the longest day of the year, June 21st 2024. Something like 7 pm. I remember thinking how special we get such a big, full moon on the day with the most sun. And now we have fire.

I walk back inside and check out the back window again. Oh there’s fire! Suddenly I am now seeing some flames at the crest of the hill.

Not just smoke, but now seeing fire, it suddenly feels more real to me and I wonder what it would take for the fire to come down the mountain to our home. I know that fire moves downhill slower than uphill but I have never been this close to a wildfire and don’t quite know what to expect.

At this point several of my neighbors are quite emotionally upset and are in the process of bugging out or have already left their homes. I do my best to offer emotional support as they flee.

I am feeling uncertain because its near dark now and I am uneasy about sleeping with a forest fire that close. After talking with more neighbors and watching that the fire hasn’t started coming down our side of the hill and taking into consideration that we are still in level 1 notice I decide to stay the night.

Its now after midnight and the sky is finally dark. I am standing on a high point on this land and watching the mountain crest. I can see the saddle between two high points is lined with fire. It feels amazing and I am awestruck. It is so surreal to stand here watching the same hills I see everyday aglow with fire.

I finally decide to get some sleep and comfort myself by setting my alarm to go off every few hours. Each time I would wake up and look out the window. Each time I could see the fire had not moved down the hill from the crest. The night air was calm and there was no wind. I felt safe and went to sleep again.

The next morning I am woken early from Ann and River checking in and I let them know what’s going on. I am so grateful that they can enjoy their time with family and not worry about the wildfire.

I decide to setup my inverter. I grab an extension cord and the cheap, refurbished inverter and connect it to our car (now deemed bug out vehicle) before turning on the car. Inside the house I plug in my phone and the Starlink satellite to the other end.

Success, I have internet! I have a flurry of neighbor messages on our neighborhood alert. Suddenly I realize I am privileged with a front row view of smoke and fire that not every neighbor can see.

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I start updating them on the condition of the fire from my vantage point. Throughout the rest of the day I am visited by 3 separate fire crews who fill me in on the status of the fire and check around our home for safety.

I am relieved to hear how straightforward it would be to defend our home if it came down to it. I am also relieved to learn that wildland firefighting would be commencing on our side of the hills soon.

They sure did. Many crews moved into our neighborhood. Ground crews were using our direct neighbor’s property as access into the BLM land.

Suddenly our power came back online. I later learned in retrospect that our power company, Pacific Power, proactively shuts down power anytime a fire is within 1 mile. It is frustrating to know that’s their policy when that power could mean our only means of communication or defending our home with water during an emergency.

Nevertheless I was so grateful to have the power back on. I didn’t have to worry about our refrigerators and freezers and I could irrigate again. I started setting up sprinklers around the house.

That next evening bulldozers and hand crews with chainsaws worked all night to establish a line on our side of the fire. I watched after dark and saw the many headlamps and bulldozer headlights doing their work on the hill side.

I have hiked in those mountains, there are no trails and it is extremely steep and precarious. I watched with awe as the bulldozers moved straight down the steep side of the mountain.

I watched with gratitude knowing those crews were between the fire and me working hard to keep us safe.

The next day the helicopters started on our side of the mountain, dropping bucket after bucket of water. Airplanes flew in low to drop retardant to reinforce the line that was being established.

And so it went every day for more than a week. In the evening wind would die down and humidity would rise. The fire would slow down.

In the dark of night I’d listen to the tree fellers’ chainsaws echo through the tight, steep canyons and the metal scraping of bulldozers and the beep-beeps as they backup over and over.

By late morning or early afternoon the day would grow hot and wind would pickup. Inevitably the air support would come in and the loud helicopters would fly overhead with their loads of water from the nearby reservoir.

Day after day this went on and we all watched and waited as the fire crews slowly contained the fire.

Eventually Ann and River returned home a week after the fire had started and luckily after the worst of it was behind us. Ironically Ann and River picked up Covid while they were away and brought it back to me, but that’s a whole other story!! And yes I am over it and well now :)

River enjoyed seeing fleets of brush engines parked on our neighbors lands and meeting firefighters a few times. He had lots of questions about the fire and my safety over the phone while he was away. One night he even dreamed of a dragon breathing fire. I reassured him everything was ok!

In a little under a week and a half the fire was declared safe enough to remove the evacuation notices and fire crews were slowly scaled back.

Oregon Department of Forestry handed off the management of the fire to BLM. The fire continues to safely burn inside the established lines as the crews “mop up” the fire to further prevent spreading.

Its only been a little over two weeks since the fire started but it already feels like lifetimes ago.

Through the whole experience of watching this unfold and experience a wildfire burning in our backyard I felt wave after wave of gratitude:

I am grateful that Ann and River left before the fire started and got to enjoy time with their family without worrying about survival.

I am grateful that our neighborhood had setup email and chat channels of communication for emergencies. They came in so handy for keeping informed. I learned in this emergency that information is so crucial.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have been able to connect more closely with many of my neighbors.

I am grateful that for the duration of the entire fire the wind direction moved the smoke past us and I experienced essentially no smoke or ash the entire time.

I am also grateful that since the wind was in our favor it helped reduce our risk of fire coming onto this land.

I am grateful that since this fire started so early in the season and since there were no other regional wildfires happening, Oregon was able to pool many, many resources and people to fight this fire. If those were not the case this fire could have grown out of control so fast.

Likewise I am grateful that winds were relatively calm in the first week of the fire which worked to everyone’s advantage. A fast, dry hot wind could have really changed things.

I am grateful for the hundreds of people that worked to fight this fire.

I am grateful for the opportunity to focus on my own survival for over a week, where I could shed other responsibilities and focus on the essentials which in some ways felt rejuvenating.

Likewise I am grateful for the privilege to be self employed and have the opportunity to take 2 weeks off of work at a moments’ notice. I am also grateful to my clients who honored and supported that decision.

I am grateful to have a garden. For the better part of a week and a half, once my essentials were packed, I preferred to be outside. Despite the hot weather I wanted to be outside so that I could see and hear what was going on. I felt safer outside. I spent more time gardening or in and around the garden. Being in the garden while the fire was in town was incredibly grounding and healing.

I am grateful for all the time we have spent to make the space around our home fire-wise, which was reflected by the firefighter’s visits.

I am grateful to see the good nature that comes out of most people during an emergency.

I am grateful that this wildfire will be encouraging state money to come into our neighborhoods and mountains to help make us more fire resilient.

I am grateful that over 1,100 acres of fuels have burned in the hills behind our homes making these hills more safe for the coming years ahead.

I am grateful for the fire to have come close to home so that I can be reminded how precious life is.

I am grateful for all the herbs we have on hand to help my immune system through Covid at the tale end of this fire!

The fire is still burning in the hills in small pockets. Over the past few days we’ve seen less and less smoke. BLM firefighters continue to mop up the fire and put it out and in the near future it will be completely out.

We came so close to knowing a different reality. It could have turned out very different for many of us neighbors and perhaps even beyond our little community. We could have been evacuated and some of us could have lost homes.

Other neighborhoods have not been so lucky in past fire seasons. Those memories haunt many people, even those who were not directly close to the fire.

Just by living in this region, fire is a real part of life. There is a reason fire season is called fire season, because it happens every year. There is just so much dry fuel plus hot, dry weather. Its not just regional, our local counties have had their fair share of fires that get out of hand in the recent past.

This time of year becomes tense for many locals in anticipation. More often than not, our fire seasons include times of poor air quality when smoke is in the air.

One things I really appreciated was that in our daily updates ODF admitted that much of the danger of this fire was due to decades of fire suppression in our mountains which has lead to decades of fuel building up.

Culture is changing, including our government’s culture, which is fast catching on to the need for regular fire for our forests’ health.

Our governments are starting to look to indigenous people’s use of fire to manage landscapes. In some cases governments are starting to consult with indigenous people.

I love that we are moving in this direction but it also doesn’t feel quite enough to my heart. Money is now fueling sometimes massive prescribed burns in order to remove dead fuels from forests and make our forests safer and healthier. But that money can’t afford to burn all the forests everywhere. Not from a centralized standpoint with limited resources.

In the past, cultural burns were part of human culture everywhere in these valleys. Every little community was involved in burning the forests and so it all got burned regularly as part of life. Often every place was burned on a 3-ish year cycle and since most of the fires were not too hot forests renewed the following spring.

Back then fire in the forests was a way of life for everyone, including grandmas and kids, and the forests were kept healthy through sacred relationship.

Our culture is starting to pick up on the reality that we need to change but we have a long way to go. I’d much rather see our governments hand over the reigns to indigenous groups.

Unfortunately our governments don’t like to say “I was wrong and you were right” so outright, nor do they like to give up control, power or money, so I don’t see that ideal happening anytime soon. But I will keep praying for that day to come one day for our children’s children.

In the meantime I sure am grateful for the sheer amount of force, tactics and skills that were used to protect our homes from the over fueled forests behind our neighborhood. These firefighting teams sure are skilled and precise. I got to see on a daily basis just how skilled and precise they are and it was a marvel to behold.

While we are working on the slow-like-honey cultural shift, fire fighting is one tax I am happy to pay for while I live in this fire prone region. And I am sure grateful for every firefighter who is willing to risk their lives for their fellow humans.

They all have my respect and admiration. And they sure have my son’s respect and admiration. He can’t stop drawing fire trucks now.

It brings tears to my eyes to know he is safe and has a cozy bed to sleep in tonight.