by Pam Houston
Also on June 26, the Colorado National Guard arrives in Creede to provide staffing for security and roadblocks. What kind of security, I wonder. Would anyone in this county, under these conditions, break into somebody’s evacuated home? Most people around here don’t even have a set of keys to lock their door. My ranch, in fact, did not come with any. Or has the National Guard arrived to keep people from breaking back into their own houses, to feed their fish, throw away their rancid cottage cheese, make sure they turned off the oven? Also, the Army Reserve Space Support Team (ARSST) arrives to see if they can help by providing satellite imagery data to fire managers.
By the morning of the twenty-seventh, there are 1,436 firefighters, 82 engines, 7 water tenders, 12 helicopters and 2 single-engine air tankers working on the fire, but it is still zero percent contained. There is a red flag warning today for dry thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. Little if any moisture is expected from these storms, but there will be gusty winds and dry lightning.
We didn’t sleep at all last night for choking on smoke. I turn the air cleaners to their highest setting and start chopping vegetables for a hearty beef stew. Out the kitchen window, the little stand of aspen at the back of the property quakes in a light wind. If every tree burns except those, I think, I will be okay. You have to be okay even if they burn too, says the voice that is always in my head, and I know it’s the only answer.
I’m just about to put the stew into the oven when I hear Greg say, “Pam, come look at this.” There is something strange in his voice, so I put the pot back on the counter and go down the hall to the bedroom. Out the bedroom window the fire is running southward, straight for us, across the east-facing slope of Baldy. And it’s moving fast, engulfing huge swathes of forest at a time. Winds, which are suddenly out of the northeast (those goddamn winds!), are pushing the fire into and back out of Trout Creek Canyon, which is straight across the valley floor from my bedroom. The average tree in Trout Creek Canyon is probably eighty feet tall, and the flames are leaping another hundred feet higher than that.
We watch silently as bunches of ten and twenty treetops explode, rocket into the air sending sparks in all directions, setting new trees on fire in a geometric arc, which in seconds becomes engulfed in this sizzling mountain of flame, this wall of moving chaos. When we open the window we can hear the explosions, the electric pop and hiss of the fire, not unlike the sound when lightning takes out a telephone pole, except continuous. It is beautiful, in its way, and terrifying, and as powerful a thing as I have seen in my life.
“I’ve been standing here thinking about Milton,” Greg says, because what else does a poet think of in the presence of a paradise lost. “I guess he must have seen fires like this in his lifetime—maybe up north somewhere in Europe. Would they have still had big forests in England in his time?”
I’ve been watching the map so carefully, measuring with the width of my fingers the distance between the fire and the property line, the fire and the barn, the fire and my little stand of aspen. I’ve been measuring that shrinking mileage against the number of days until the monsoon comes, should come, praying (not that I was ever very good at praying) that in a week or even less it might start raining. Unless along with everything else, this fire finds a way to presuck the monsoon moisture right out of the sky.
On average, the Papoose fire has moved a mile every twenty-four hours, though there was one day when it ran several miles, up the backside of Baldy, and another when it moved almost not at all. I’ve managed each night to run the numbers in such a way as to convince myself there’s at least half a chance the ranch will be saved by the monsoon. It’s been the only way I can get any sleep.
As hard as I know it’s been for Greg to be at the ranch in all the smoke and worry, it’s also been hard to be away, relying on maps and charts and the crazy doublespeak of InciWeb, which often seems constructed only in tautologies (“Priority Number One: Facilitate cooperation with the cooperators”) and jabberwocky (“Ensure the risk analysis process continues to be utilized to mitigate risk and provide for the flexibility to apply the right resource to the right task at the right time”). Now I’m home and this day is blowing all of those averages out of the water. The fire has run six miles since this morning, it isn’t even two in the afternoon and the wind is only getting stronger. The very air between us and Baldy feels charred. Am I such a devoted environmentalist that I’ll be willing to live in this big a scar in the name of sitting at the bedside of the ravaged earth, without it breaking my heart to pieces each morning when I open my eyes?
As we stand at the window contemplating seventeenth-century poetry and a two-hundred-foot wall of fire less than a mile and a half away, at least 35 of the (now) 109 engines that have answered our call from all over the West come barreling up Middle Creek Road without even hesitating at the checkpoint, lights blazing in the burnt orange and charcoaled light of that terrible afternoon. About ten minutes later, the folks who live at the Soward Ranch come tearing down the other way, having decided, apparently, to evacuate after all. There haven’t been this many vehicles on Middle Creek Road all at one time in the twenty years I’ve lived here.
Greg and I run out into the yard and ash balls the size of lemons are hitting the house, landing in our hair. Here, the pop and the sizzle of the fire is louder, more like the noises a woodstove makes, but on a much grander scale. This unprecedented run must be sending up one of those nuclear-looking clouds like the West Fork did last week, but now we are too far inside the cloud to see it. The sky is the color of steel, the color of Armageddon. This, I think, might really be the end of the world.
Torching: The ignition and flare-up of a tree or small group of trees, usually from bottom to top (USDA Forest Service Fire Terminology).
Blow-up: A sudden increase in fire intensity or rate of spread strong enough to prevent direct control or to upset control plans. Blow-ups are often accompanied by violent convection and may have other characteristics of a firestorm. (See Flare-up) (USDA Forest Service Fire Terminology).
Firestorm: Violent convection caused by a large continuous area of intense fire. Often characterized by destructively violent surface indrafts, near and beyond the perimeter, and sometimes by tornado-like whirls (Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology).
We all go around saying Mother Nature bats last—and I say, we can only hope so. Back at my bedroom window, watching acre after acre of trees explode into flame, I have to conclude she’s seeing the ball pretty well with runners in scoring position. I picture her in the batter’s box with the bat on her shoulder and a gleam in her eye, her hair all spiked out like Becky Barkman’s. Suppress this, motherfuckers! says the thought bubble next to her mouth. Seeing her power up close like this makes me believe she may find a way to survive us still.
The leading edge of the fire is fully back out of Trout Creek now and starting to make its way around Antelope Park, the home stretch between it and my little stand of trees. “Okay,” I say, and Greg looks a question at me. “If the forest is going to all of this trouble to save itself, then the least I can do is spend the rest of my life watching it come back to life.” It feels good in my heart to have one thing settled.
At five, the phone rings and it’s Dex, who volunteers for Search and Rescue, telling us we’re on standby now and will likely get the call to evacuate within the hour.
I would have guessed packing for evacuation would be scattered and nervous and haphazard, but in fact it puts me, for two hours, into a state of razor-sharp eye-opening clarity. Before today, I would have said my three thousand books were my most valued possessions, but I quickly realize they actually fall into three clear categories: books I love by people I don’t like, books I don’t love by people I like okay, and books I adore by people I adore, which are the only ones worth saving. I get out to the car with one largish produce box and call it good. I have enough photo albums of my adventures from the predigital days to fill a medium sized U-Haul, and they won’t all fit no matter what I
do. So, yes to Bhutan and Bolivia, both of which changed my life, no to Patagonia, which was beautiful but bleak. Yes to Laos, where I watched the saffron-clad monks line up in the misty dawn with their begging bowls while the women of Luang Prabang fed them; no to Cambodia—where a man tried to sell me his teenaged son for ten dollars. Yes to my signed Todd Helton jersey, because there will never be another Todd, yes to the pelican woodcut print my grad students bought me, yes to the Christmas present Greg got me the first year we were together: a whole series of little boxes filled with tiny talismans. Yes to my lime green ultralight Marmot sleeping bag because they finally made one I don’t sweat in, and it would be too sad to use it a total of once. Yes to a pretty silver and green rock I can’t for the life of me remember the name of. Years of back taxes? Not so much. I face my closet and can’t find one single stick of clothing I care whether or not I own. If I ever have to evacuate again, I believe I’ll make more or less the same decisions, with a possible 25 percent reduction. Even as I’m filling boxes, I’m already planning—if what I’m leaving behind still exists when the fire is over—to make a dozen trips to Goodwill.
A little while later, carrying a box through the smoky air to the car, I stop for a minute to stare at my lovely lopsided barn, raised in 1920 by Bob Pinckley. I would burn every single object in these boxes myself to save it. But I would trade even the barn for the forest, maybe not the ravaged beetle-killed forest, but the all-green one, the one that was here twenty years ago when I moved in.
I set my box in the 4Runner and check on the sheep and chickens. When we evacuate, I’ll turn the sheep out to pasture with a couple of bales of hay. It’s hard to picture the fire running across what little stubble there’s left out there, and they would have creek water, and some pockets of dried-up grass to eat if they keep us out of the house until next week. Mr. Kitty, the Mad Max of cats, will also stay behind. He’s feral and won’t let himself be picked up or carried. For the first several years he lived here, Mr. Kitty wouldn’t touch his cat food, intimating he preferred his food fresh and still warm. If any living creature can survive an environmental disaster, it’s him.
The chickens, on the other hand, won’t last five minutes in this land of coyotes, bald eagles, mountain lion and lynx. The only thing to do is put them into our one cat carrier—together—take them with us wherever we go, and hope for the best.
And where will we go? I haven’t gotten that far in my figuring. Becky says we are welcome in Gunnison—she has a bunch of little outbuildings. But she also has thirty sled dogs and ten horses, not counting my equines. It might be a bit ungrateful to show up with two 150-pound dogs and a couple of pissed-off birds.
There are shelters, of course, in Del Norte and Monte Vista, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a dog-friendly spa. It’s hard to imagine a spa—or for that matter, a shelter—being chicken friendly. We can’t go too far, because as soon as the evacuation lifts, I’ll need to come home and check on the sheep.
It’s three hours since Dex called, the 4Runner is one-third full, and Greg has loaded his guitar equipment and a couple of boxes of books into the back of his truck. Still no evacuation call. I walk back into the house and say to Greg, “That’s all I’m taking. This has been enough time. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
Meanwhile, to the east of us, the fire continues to be active near Metroz Lake and Elk Mountain, which would be plenty close enough to strike the fear of God in us, if we didn’t have Dante’s inferno going on immediately to the west. Firefighters are using a combination of hand line, dozer line, hose lays and aircraft drops as delaying tactics to slow the fire as it moves toward a more defensible position on the lower slopes. For the first time, near sunset, the smoke lifts enough for us to see the flames of both fires at the same time. The fear that the Papoose and the West Fork will join forces is palpable under every phrase and clause on InciWeb. At this moment there is very little between the two fires other than the Soward Ranch and us.
Convergence Zone: The area of increased flame height and fire intensity produced when two or more fire fronts burn together (Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology).
At nine o’clock that evening, InciWeb reports extreme fire behavior moved the Papoose Fire almost five miles in less than two hours, spotting of one-quarter to one-half mile occurred and the fire is now well established in Trout Creek, which is where all those engines on Middle Creek Road were heading. Firefighters burned out brush around homes there, and night shifters are currently en route to help with structure protection. Portable retardant plants are being installed at several locations along the corridor where the Papoose and the West Fork are threatening to come together. This will allow aerial resources to respond more quickly to support the forces on the ground. All power has been shut off to residences in Trout Creek, and there is still no known structure loss. There are currently 1,561 people, 113 engines, 4 dozers, 10 water tenders, 16 helicopters and 2 single-engine air tankers working on the fire, which has grown to 83,004 acres. We are told to expect heavy smoke overnight and into the morning.
Bambi Bucket: A collapsible bucket slung below a helicopter. Used to dip water from a variety of sources for fire suppression (USDA Forest Service Fire Terminology).
Lining: Activity related to burn out along a fireline, using drip torches, fusees or other flammable material (Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology).
Drip Torch: A hand-carried fire-starting device filled with flammable liquid that is poured across a flaming wick, dropping flaming liquid onto the fuels to be burned (Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology).
Fusee: A colored flare designed as a railway warning device, widely used to ignite backfires and other prescribed fires (Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology).
Many more hours and then the whole night passes and still we are not evacuated. In the morning it is impossible to breathe, but by afternoon, the smoke lifts a bit and we take the dogs for a walk in the cracked and dried-out pasture. The wind seems to have simmered down. The fire stops running so hard and goes about consuming what’s left of the trees on Baldy, the mouth of Trout Creek and Copper Creek Canyon. It is still crawling steadily—if much more slowly—around the back of Antelope Park toward the ranch.
Today there’s an article on InciWeb with photographs showing how, in many places inside the West Fork Fire boundary, living aspen stands have slowed or stopped the fire, because they are much more resistant than the beetle-kill spruce. I look out the window at the mountain, and the sickle of aspen between me and the leading edge of the fire, and think, This is the first good news I’ve heard in three weeks.
The multi-agency/multi-jurisdictional incident command team is working towards a possible opening of 160 over Wolf Creek Pass on Saturday June 29th. Please note: this opening is dependent upon three main events: the local fire evacuation orders must be lifted prior to the highway opening; the comprehensive traffic control plan details need to be finalized (for safe escort of motorists); and the fire behavior must remain moderate (NFS InciWeb).
For the first time, at six on the evening of June 28, the West Fork Fire is not reported at zero percent contained. It has consumed 90,806 acres and is 2 percent contained. At a town meeting that evening, which takes place in the gym of the old asbestos-ridden, mold-infested K–12 school (the very next year, having survived the fires, Mineral County residents will vote almost 75–25 to raise taxes in order to build a newer, safer state-of-the-art energy-efficient school, which will open its doors to students in September 2015), Incident Commander Pete Blume keeps reiterating that we must not “get our hopes up” about containment and we must “give up our attachment” to containment numbers. They are no longer looking to contain, but to control the direction of the fire, and a fire this big, in these fuels, might well keep burning until the snow flies.
I can tell by the energy in the room that we, the people of Mineral County, feel almost insanely attached to our containment numbers. We haven’t had any containment numbers to g
et attached to at all until today; we are inordinately attached to our measly 2 percent, and we don’t feel like giving it back.
If nothing else, in the last month, I have learned to speak the language of the United States Forest Service. When Pete Blume tells us “authorities will continue to minimize suppression impacts to cultural, historical, and natural resources through consultation with resource advisors and provide point protection to defend structures and private land using designated protocol,” I find I know exactly what he means.
During the past week, six members of the Honolulu Fire Department have been shadowing members of the Incident Management Teams here on the West Fork Fire Complex. They are particularly interested in the management of long-term incidents since the majority of incidents they deal with in Hawaii last only a day or two (NFS InciWeb).
Years ago, while mountaineering with bronchitis in the Bhutanese Himalayas, I scarred my lungs, so when the fire is still stalled out on June 29, Greg encourages me to get out of the smoke and go back to Oregon for the last day of residency to see my favorite student, Sherri Hoffman, graduate. After that, we’ll reevaluate and decide whether I should go on to Big Sur for five days of teaching at Esalen. If the fires join forces, or we get evacuated, I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and come straight home.
Founded by hippies in 1962 to explore alternative methods of human consciousness, Esalen has no cell-phone reception and extremely limited internet service and likes it that way. I call to see if they can put a landline in my forest yurt under these circumstances, and they are happy to. All of my favorite possessions, such as they are, are still in the 4Runner, so I take them with me to the airport, and after considering parking them in the $22-a-day garage, leave them out in Long Term instead.