As I mentioned here previously, my wife and I have moved into a new apartment. This was the primary driving influence behind my recent hiatus, and I took off last week from work in order to commit as much time as possible to getting us moved out. Ordinarily this would have been plenty of time. But this time there was a hitch. Our old apartment is in the small foothill town of Stevenson Ranch, CA. Perhaps you’ve heard of it in the news lately.
Everything we own smells of smoke, and I have probably inhaled more particulate matter in the past week than is wise or healthy. If you’ve never been that close to a major fire, it’s hard to explain the density and pervasiveness of the smoke. It is absolutely everywhere. Keeping the doors and windows shut and the air conditioning on worked pretty well for most of the first day. After that, the inside started to smell more like outside. At first, it smelled almost pleasantly like a fireplace, then like a bonfire. Then as the fire came closer it began to take on a scent that was just unnerving – as the sweet smell of wood fire gradually gave way to a heavy odor of danger. It’s a smell that makes one feel instinctively like it’s about time to get the hell out of Dodge.
On the second day, the fire crested the hills above our building. It was more than a little unreal to watch the fire line coming down the mountain in the evening. It came down in a long glowing orange dividing line between the sage color before it, and the black behind it. It looked strangely like the way the lit end of a cigar creeps slowly toward your lips as you smoke it. Late that afternoon, the light changed. Everything turned orange – illuminated by the pumpkin glow of the smoke-obscured sun. It’s something you have to see to really appreciate. We took a few pictures during the move, and I’ll post them if they come out.
The whole time, ash was raining down like snow. I know that analogy is pretty cliché, but it really does look that way. It gets caught up in the wind and floats down in the same way snow does in a flurry. I considered trying to catch some on my tongue, but thought better of it before it was too late. Like the smoke, the ash is completely omnipresent. It collects on any horizontal surface in no time at all. It is down your shirt and under your hat. It is in your nose, in your mouth and often in your eyes. It’s in your carpet, and in your food. It’s probably still in my lungs tearing apart my delicate tissues. Is it normal to cough blood?
The Stevenson Ranch fire ended well – as far as things like that “go well”. There were no mandatory evacuations, even at the height of the action. Most of the flammable brush has burned away, and no homes were lost. Many other communities were not as fortunate. Regardless, we’re out of there now. Since we moved to a nice place closer to the coast and away from mountains and brush, hopefully we won’t have to go through that kind of thing again. We have a new nemesis at our new place. Ants. I’ll be telling you about them soon, I’m sure.
Bye for now.