Well, that was an exciting evening.
The Spouse and I were enjoying a quiet Cocktail Hour at home, with martinis and Absolut-Citron-and-Toschi-liqueur-spiked lemonade, "savoring", as Philip Collins puts it, "the small victories of the day." We were also savoring a set of cheeses1 left from last weekend's visit to the Cheese Store as a lazy and ovenless alternative to cooking dinner.
The cocktails left us drowsy, and with the best thing we could find on TV being a dull baseball game, we both drifted off for a while. When the news came on, we woke up in a hurry on hearing "wildfire burning north of [Our Town]" --- with an evacuation zone ending some six blocks north and a little west of the house. Nothing was visible from the lawn so we piled into the car and headed out for a look. First off, the main road (normally dead quiet that time of night) near home was packed with cars, looking like the traffic coming out of a football game. We snaked further and further out until the Spouse spied orange light through the trees. Then we hit a ridge with a better view, and what a view it was. A whole rectangle of hillside was spotted with bright orange flame. The side boundaries were solid with fire, and the red and blue lights of the fire trucks were flashing up at the top of the hill.
It's one thing to see TV news pictures of a fire, or even to see a plume of forest fire smoke off in the distance. This was gut-level creepy in a completely different way.
We spent the next couple of hours enacting the preliminary stages of our evacuation plan. (No order had been given for us; when it's your time, the cops have an auto-dialer that calls to tell you to get out.) Cleaned out the trunk of the car; assembled the cat carrier; packed financial files, wedding pictures, autographed "Life in Hell" books and expensive booze into a box.... We felt a little paranoid when we first made up the plan, but now it didn't seem so silly after all.
As it turned out, the firefighters (just about every one in the county, as we read this morning) kept the blaze under control. We didn't suffer anything worse than having the house smell like a campfire all night, and none of the multi-million dollar trophy homes on the hillside burned down. (Whew.) But with a night of breathing smoky air plus the tipsy-sleepy-shocked-adrenalized roller coaster ride, you'll forgive me if I'm a little groggy today.
1 Havarti, Edam and Camembert, if you must know, plus some proscuitto and smoked salmon. I still haven't been brave enough to try the goat's milk Brie. (The Spouse wants nothing to do with it.) Even inside a ziploc bag, it's funking up the fridge something wicked.
The Spouse and I were enjoying a quiet Cocktail Hour at home, with martinis and Absolut-Citron-and-Toschi-liqueur-spiked lemonade, "savoring", as Philip Collins puts it, "the small victories of the day." We were also savoring a set of cheeses1 left from last weekend's visit to the Cheese Store as a lazy and ovenless alternative to cooking dinner.
The cocktails left us drowsy, and with the best thing we could find on TV being a dull baseball game, we both drifted off for a while. When the news came on, we woke up in a hurry on hearing "wildfire burning north of [Our Town]" --- with an evacuation zone ending some six blocks north and a little west of the house. Nothing was visible from the lawn so we piled into the car and headed out for a look. First off, the main road (normally dead quiet that time of night) near home was packed with cars, looking like the traffic coming out of a football game. We snaked further and further out until the Spouse spied orange light through the trees. Then we hit a ridge with a better view, and what a view it was. A whole rectangle of hillside was spotted with bright orange flame. The side boundaries were solid with fire, and the red and blue lights of the fire trucks were flashing up at the top of the hill.
It's one thing to see TV news pictures of a fire, or even to see a plume of forest fire smoke off in the distance. This was gut-level creepy in a completely different way.
We spent the next couple of hours enacting the preliminary stages of our evacuation plan. (No order had been given for us; when it's your time, the cops have an auto-dialer that calls to tell you to get out.) Cleaned out the trunk of the car; assembled the cat carrier; packed financial files, wedding pictures, autographed "Life in Hell" books and expensive booze into a box.... We felt a little paranoid when we first made up the plan, but now it didn't seem so silly after all.
As it turned out, the firefighters (just about every one in the county, as we read this morning) kept the blaze under control. We didn't suffer anything worse than having the house smell like a campfire all night, and none of the multi-million dollar trophy homes on the hillside burned down. (Whew.) But with a night of breathing smoky air plus the tipsy-sleepy-shocked-adrenalized roller coaster ride, you'll forgive me if I'm a little groggy today.
1 Havarti, Edam and Camembert, if you must know, plus some proscuitto and smoked salmon. I still haven't been brave enough to try the goat's milk Brie. (The Spouse wants nothing to do with it.) Even inside a ziploc bag, it's funking up the fridge something wicked.
posted by Rob at
1:34 PM
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