Inside Fire Season

Abstract

Inside Fire Season Joy Lanzendorfer (bio) saturday, october 26, 2019 acres on fire: 26,000 buildings destroyed: 77 I'm starting to get used to the idea of evacuating my home. This is the third time. The first was in 2017, when the Tubbs Fire tore through nearby Santa Rosa. The second time was voluntary, when we fled the smoke caused by the deadly Camp Fire. Now I find myself at risk again as the Kincade Fire burns near Geyserville, forty minutes away. Despite this, I'm not sure what to save should my house be engulfed in flames. My possessions become both worthless and precious at the same time and value splinters into different meanings: monetary, practical, historical, sentimental. I can live without all of it, but I have it around for a reason. Finally my husband and I agree on a rule: We won't take anything we can replace. In my office, I flip through a volume of high school poetry, cringing at every melodramatic word. It wouldn't be terrible if this burned, I think. Still, I throw it in the box alongside early short stories and elementary school diaries. The future version of myself, the one who has lost her house in a fire, feels oppressive. I don't want to disappoint her. This box of personal scribblings is small compared to my library, which fills an entire wall of my office. But most of those books can be replaced, so okay. My teenage poetry to be saved, Jane Austen to burn. In the bedroom, my husband has rigged up an air cleaner by taping a filter to a fan. Last year, the entire state was cloaked in smoke as the town of Paradise burned down, killing eighty-five people. I got sick—a sore throat and hacking cough that didn't go away until we drove to Oregon and camped in the woods. This time, we're being more careful, but I can still smell smoke, even inside. I contemplate my clothes. Will I want to save the nicer clothes that I've [End Page 98] collected over time but wear only for fancy occasions, or will I want comfortable clothes to wear in a shelter? I'll definitely want socks and underwear, although, to be fair, those can be replaced. I try Marie Kondo. What brings me joy? Having a bed and a house. Not evacuating. There are clothes I love because of the deals I got on them—the three-dollar leather boots from a thrift store, the three-hundred-dollar Kate Spade jeans I found on sale for fifty. I shove everything in bags. It can all be replaced, but finding clothes I like is hard. I don't even go into the kitchen. At this point, the Kincade Fire is on the other end of Sonoma County, but it's spreading so fast that authorities are evacuating most of the population, around two hundred thousand people. Everyone I know is affected. The closest evacuation is Valley Ford, an isolated hamlet connected to me by a long, dry country road. My home, Petaluma, is the first stop for evacuees. The fairground has been turned into an emergency shelter, but from what I hear, it's already full. Outside, I fill the chicken feeder in case we have to leave them behind. We can't bring chickens to a hotel room, so they'll have to take their chances. As I watch my three hens gobble the food, I suddenly sense someone behind me. When I whirl around, no one is there. A second later, the wind moves the leaves by the garage toward me, which is the wrong way. Usually the wind would move leaves away from me, toward the gate, not in the opposite direction, toward the chickens. I go into the backyard and stare up at the Japanese privet. The wind sloshes the branches in a way that seems backward. It looks strange in the smoky air, like the tree is drunk. For the second time, hurricane-force winds are causing fires in Sonoma County. It's not just that the winds are strong—although they are, ripping the...