Living in a fringe community, one expects a certain amount out of the ordinary. I've lived in a few and find them much more welcoming than big cities, where I used to thrive. As a young man I lived on an island for a while. Life on a mountain isn't the same as that but it isn't wholly different.
I remember the day I came to see the cabin. Every fifty or so yards on the one little road into town was another warning: mudslides, rock slides, bears and deer in the roads, wildfire. As strange as this is going to read, I knew I was home. More than a dozen years later that's still true, even as a fire required us to evacuate yesterday.
This isn't the first time and I doubt it will be the last. The town's been closed due to snowfall and a few years back we made national news when 9' drifts of mud took out the road and the president actually deemed our tiny town a disaster area. Last summer an arsonist (coincidentally one working in the Fire Service) started a blaze that forced me to return to work on a Friday evening and camp out. Because of all this I started keeping basic supplies in my car a long time back. Last night I was glad the sleeping bag was among them.
But they named this burn: the Valley Fire. Before I left home they had estimated 200 acres had burned. By the time I made it into the flatlands a few hours later it was up to 400. When I finally packed it in last night, 1000 acres were gone. This morning it's still at 0% containment.
Here's where I play the age card. Even though I live in a town with a population that swings between 1000-1200, I found out a few years ago that we actually have a handful of public access webcams on 24 hour feed. A friend told me about them when I was trying to find out about snow conditions one winter, to see if I'd be allowed up the road. So for the last half day I've been able to go online or provide a link for people to get in the moment status on the mountain. Even ten years ago I couldn't have imagined such a thing. As much as I kvetch about the state of things and the direction they're going, I really do think this is kind of a positive. At least in the sense that I can assuage the concerns of some about my situation; they all still know that I'm nuts.
So as I look out at an orange sky that's normally slate and soft pastel purple at this time of day, knowing that I'm going to spend a big chunk of my weekend living at work, I find myself surprisingly not too curmudgeonly. There are reasons to carp if I want them, but why go down that road? I'm awake and alive. The handful of things I managed to bring down the hill other than my clothes mean I have the absolute luxury of writing, reading and making music. If that isn't luckier than I deserve, I don't know what is.
Of course my being here means there could be another incident of online word vomiting before the weekend's gone, so you may not be so lucky.
And so it goes.
