Where do I begin to document this? I think with Absence. With the absence that has replaced my daily life and the free-wheeling restlessness that has come along with it. They’re here, in place of the trees, the critters and tasks that had formed the sensory mosaic of my days.
They’ve replaced my granddaughters’ laughing, crying, or telling me the most important thing of the moment as only the little ones can. They’re unwelcome substitutes for the plants and raised beds I mucked around in, tended and kept watered. The quiet, the green, and the occasional isolation of living on a wooded mountain 1,700 ft above sea level.
We’re staying with family, my husband and I, about two hours from home — waiting, worrying, watching. Even as we got news yesterday that no new fires are expected and the red flag warning removed, it feels like a shift in degree and not qualitative. Too much was left behind and too many questions are pressing right now.
We have four bunnies in our large enclosed back yard. They share their space with two geese and our chickens. We managed to get our geese out. Sunny and Misty are enjoying green grass in Santa Cruz. But the others have been on their own. My husband and I bottle fed two of the bunnies after their mother was taken by a bobcat when the litter was only a week old. Against all odds Mousie and Goldie made it – the smallest of the six. The other two bunnies arrived fully grown and might have become food, but instead became part of our homestead family . Every evening we would give them treats, being careful not to fall over Mousie or Goldie. Those two would wait for us, then stand on our toes, lick our fingers and remind us they remembered.
We’ve got seven older layers and 10 new chickens. We raised them all, the newbies as day-olds this spring. If they’re alive, they’ll be ready to start laying. We raised broilers for our households. Our son, conscious of the horrors of store-bought meat hunted meat for our families. From fine cuts to bone broth, he prepared or froze every part of every animal that gave its life so we could eat healthy meat. The veggies in our raised beds and the meat in the freezers would have been food for several months. It seems small, this level of absence, compared to others who have lost homes filled with years, sometimes decades, of memories. Yet our private losses, small by comparison, are a piece of our anxiety as we wait.
It all began around 2:30 am Sunday, August 16th. My son walked from his house to our cottage to let us know “Everything’s fine, but….” I was already awake. High winds and lightning strikes were coming every few seconds. Between his kitchen and our doorway, PG&E flipped the switch and our power was gone. We’d been living with record-breaking temps tipping 100 F and full-on sunshine at the driest time of year. They had to turn off power due to fire danger. Then due to the fires, they couldn’t access the site for several days to fix the burned equipment and get power back on.
That night I sat on the porch and watched the lightning show for almost two hours. I finally dozed off until the smell of smoke woke me. It didn’t seem close, but strong, nonetheless. Without power we have no water, no stove top or oven, and without WIFI, no connection to the outside world. By 7:30 am, with no knowledge of what was going on, exhausted and information-starved, we all gathered our dogs and a few items and went to our other son’s house in Santa Cruz.
But that was too much for one place – 6 adults, 3 kids, 3 big dogs and 2 little ones. With blazing heat, awful air quality and no power at home, my husband and I decided to leave and spend the night at my sister’s in the Bay Area. We assumed PG&E would soon flip on the power again. We waited. The next days dragged on with bad news, worse news and still no power. On Tuesday, August 18th, PG&E put out the word: Power! We were excited to go home the next morning, figuring we’d navigate the bad air for a while.
In the middle of that night, police had banged on the doors of our empty houses to give the evacuation order. Overnight, spot fires caused by thousands of lightning strikes had joined up. The power was turned off again, this time indefinitely. Our entire community of Bonny Doon was evacuated. All that was left was fire.
By the end of the week, 77,000 people had been evacuated from our county. The evac centers in Santa Cruz and Watsonville were overflowing. Soon hotels, motels and whatever Airbnb folks could find were filled too. The county of Santa Cruz took the unprecedented step of asking everyone who didn’t live there to stay away and leave room for displaced locals. As best they could, they put in place social distancing and health protocols. We live in a state that, as I write today on 8/25 is still battling over 600 wildfires and Covid-19 while it shelters more than 250,000 evacuees.
Our sons are twins and barely need to speak to each other to know what needs to be done. Today they got on their mountain bikes to go up to the homestead and tend to business. They’ve spent a lot of time in the back country so I’m not too worried about their sneaking past blockades, spot fires or burnt trees. Once we hear back, this first chapter will close. At least we’ll know if our ongoing absence and restlessness will be filled with hope for our animals or grief at their fate.
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