In the night . . . in the dark . . . things are brewing

It always comes just when you've let your mind wander. Outside the dark windows, the wind howled. I could hear aspen leaves pinging against the window screen and the dock grinding against its moorings out in the roiling bay. Occasionally, a distant creak and crash came from somewhere deep in the forest. The power flickered once . . . twice . . . three times, then prevailed. I re-queued the DVD, pulled at my ball of yarn and started another row of knitting. Nothing bad was going to happen. Not tonight.

But the phone rang at a time all too late and the wrong day (Friday) for it to be a friendly "check-in." And just as I said "hello?", Andy's emergency pager went off. So while I took a message from our neighbor that a tree had tipped into a live electric line down the road and nothing could be done to extinguish the small fire until the electric company came (from 70+ miles away) to switch off the power and would Andy come and help turn on the wildland fire sprinkler systems around the bay, Andy was wriggling into his fire gear. And suddenly, I was switching my pajama bottoms for real pants, shoving my feet into tired sneakers and running down the gravel road, the flashlight throwing a jiggling white light out into the darkness in front of us.

I should have known that a morning that dawned red could only mean calamity. But the unease I felt rising to a reddish orange glow in the northern sky dissipated as the day wore on, even as the wind kicked up. It was a red-flag day for the fire danger and the local agencies had banned fires of any nature. Not even charcoal grills were allowed. Water levels were so low that our "floating" dock sat on the lake's bottom and the dying grass and leaves in the woods crackled underfoot.

I left the flashlight with Andy and returned to cabin after it became apparent that my biggest contribution to the firefighting effort would be to stay out of the way. To the moan of approaching sirens, I crouched beneath the porch, fiddling with our own sprinkler pump. When I filled bottles of water from the lake shore for the pump's reservoir, the wind blew so hard that it flipped the bottom of my flimsy button-up shirt up over my chest and twisted the shirt around me.

The smoking tree burnt a 10'x10' patch under the power line before the electricity was shut off and the fire department could extinguish it. By the time I walked over with a thermos of coffee for the quickly fading volunteer crew, it was nearly midnight. Under the flashing glow of red emergency vehicle lights, I watched the firefighters rolling hoses and packing away chainsaws.

The wind still buffeted the cabin when I finally rustled under the covers. But as I listened to the floor boards creak and Andy toss and turn next to me, I tried to lull myself back into that sense of security I'd had earlier in the evening.

Nothing bad was going to happen. Not tonight.

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Smoke Gets in My Eyes

When I'm at a campfire, it seems like no matter where I sit, I always end up with smoke blowing straight in my face. Sometimes my life feels like that too. There's always smoke in my life, coming from somewhere.

Although we had lovely damp summer which kept wildfire danger at bay, we've now gone for several weeks without any significant rainfall. Recently, the extremely dry weather's been paired with high winds which is bad news Smokey bears for a small wildfire that's been smoldering on the far side of the national forest we live in. The fire that was 11,000 acres yesterday morning is now 60,000+ acres at the very smallest. A mandatory evacuation been instated for residential areas in the fire's path and wilderness crews have spend the last couple days evacuating Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness visitors out of the woods in effected areas.

The fire may be 30 miles off, but depending on how the wind blows, we've been getting pretty smoked out.  Yesterday at noon, the smoke masked the sun casting the world in an unnatural hazy orange glow.  As the wind howled past the windows, little bits of black ash blew through the window cracks onto the museum exhibits. The fire produced its own severe thunderstorm system yesterday afternoon, creating cloud to ground lightning and a downpour that dropped both raindrops and burnt pine needles in the area where Andy works.

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Maybe I Don't Get It

We got rain today. A lot of rain. The good soaking kind that forces me to drive to work and which in turn drives people to a museum in droves. For most people the rain was a mild inconvenience. For others, the precipitation came as a relief. “We need the rain so badly,” the latter group said all day. “The fire danger was so high!”

Maybe I don’t get it. And knowing me, that’s probably the case, so let me preface this by saying that I don't mean to be insensitive. I just sometimes wonder what all the worry's about.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been dry around here. The water level in the lake is worryingly low. And frankly the wildfires of 2007 just weren’t quite long enough ago for most people around here.

I didn’t experience the Ham Lake Fire of 2007 first hand. I wasn’t evacuated from my home for 12 days. Although I have plenty of fire memories, I haven’t had any personally traumatic fire experiences.

When it’s dry outside, I notice, kind of like noticing that it’s raining or that the sky is blue. But it’s rare that the dryness of the environment seems truly ominous to me. In fact, the last time the world seems poised for wildfire was the spring of 2007, when my walks through the woods behind my college campus seemed reminiscent of walking through a tinder box. Low and behold, less than a week after a rather creepily crackly and dry walk through woods, the Ham Lake Fire started 100 miles away from where I’d hiked.

When I was in college, I interviewed Senator Mark Dayton (yes, the very same Senator Dayton running for Minnesota Governor) for an article in weekly student newspaper. I asked him the typical college newspaper questions: what did he think about job prospects, health insurance, etc. To one my questions, he responded, “Plan for your future, but don’t worry about it.”

Up here in the woods, we all have sprinkler systems installed on our property and cabins. We try to be environmentally responsible. We hope people will heed the words of Smokey Bear and do their best to prevent wildfires.

And that’s pretty much all we can do. Worrying about the rain won’t make it rain. We simply have to be ready for what could happen, but we can’t devote all of today to worrying about what might happen.

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Home Check In

Some things change when you return home from the Pacific Northwest. For one thing, all the trees seem so small here in the great Northwoods. And they’re really close together.

Some things really change while you’re gone. When we left, ice still covered the majority of the lake. The ice went out completely the day after we left and today was the first time since December that we’ve seen the ripple of open water on the lake. Typically the ice goes out in early May. This irregular spring weather is discomfiting to the point of being scary since its turning the woods into a veritable tinderbox. Fire danger is currently “very high.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom on the home front. The bird feeders that I filled before leaving are empty and this afternoon I brought them in to retire them for the summer. The plant caretaker who stopped by the Shack a couple times to water the plants is worth her weight. Both the African Violet and the Christmas Cactus are showing off lovely blooms and the spider plant is getting ready to throw its first plant since I took in the little guy.

Of course, the house plants aren’t the only things that did some growing in the Shack while we were gone . . . .

Ick! I predict some bleach action in the future.

I had some good writing news waiting for me in my inbox this afternoon. A short story I wrote in December was accepted by my alma mater’s annual literary and artistic journal and actually won this year’s “best prose” award. On the flip side, the couple poems I also submitted were not accepted which reinforces my belief that my writing energy should not be wasted on poetry. I respect a good poet and I fear that good poets are far more talented wordsmiths than I will ever be. However, as someone who seeks to make her living with her writing, I do not have the time to develop my poetry to the extent that it needs development, nor has poetry ever proven especially lucrative.

Speaking of freelancing, I also had an article assignment waiting in my inbox. Am only mildly freaking out about the amount of work I’m supposed to complete upon my true return home at the end of the month.

Right now, writing is not the priority. Laundry and figuring out what to pack for New York City trip are at the forefront of my mind tonight. But first, after nearly two weeks straight of travel, I think a good night sleep in my own bed is in order.

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