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Not the vacation I was expecting
On Sunday, I packed up my car, said goodbye to Tori and T, and headed up to Shasta Lake for a week of houseboating with friends. This is the third year in a row we've gone, and it's been an excellent little escape, especially during the pandemic era -- spending a week in nature with poor Internet access if any, soaking in warmth and sun, reading, swimming, hanging out with some of my favorite people. This year's trip was shaping up to be more of the same, with particularly good weather and clear air, and I had been writing up little tidbits to share in a jokey "ship's log" format.
Then we woke up on Thursday morning and saw this:
We had seen and smelled a bit of smoke the night before, but we had no idea that it was so close, and definitely didn't realize the scale until our phones started getting emergency alerts about evacuation notices. We called our marina to check in; some of the evacuation zones were nearby, but they didn't seem too concerned, so we motored on to find a spot to anchor for the evening. Because we were some distance from the fire with miles of lake between us, and the winds were blowing in the other direction, it was actually kind of amazing to observe it all happening -- watching the air corps flying through smoke, dumping water and fire retardant, and our nighttime view was pretty spectacular:
We also had some brilliant stargazing that night before moonrise, including a view of the Milky Way. That night, we had dinner outside, watching the fire and the near-full moon, and it was lovely and gorgeous and still fairly relaxing -- until just before bedtime, when a bit of errant cell signal allowed us to learn that the evacuation zone had grown, and our marina was now inside it.
Since we were at least two hours away from the marina, it's a bad idea to take the houseboat out at night, and we didn't want to drive twisty roads in the dark under unknown fire conditions, we decided it made more sense to just stay where we were until morning. Morning came, and after talking through our options, we concluded we should try to get out if the roads from the marina were clear. We were safe on the lake, and could have evacuated through another marina if necessary, but that would have meant abandoning our cars for an unknown amount of time, weeks or even longer if things went badly. So we motored back, packed up all our stuff, and loaded the cars -- with this view off the back of our boat motivating us to work faster:
(Based on the fire maps I checked later, the smoke was one or two ridges back; that's probably the closest we ever got to the actual fire.)
It took a little over an hour to pack up, clean the boat, and hit the road. The marina staff assured us that the road out was clear, and it was, but we passed lots of Cal Fire personnel hard at work: clearing underbrush and downed tree limbs, setting up potential perimeters, and looking for hotspots; we also saw a fire retardant drop just a ridge in front of us, which was pretty spectacular, and it was all fascinating while also being a bit scary. Right as we were leaving, a big Cal Fire pickup barreled right past us and into the marina, and we speculated that it might have been orders to the marina personnel to get themselves out and clear any remaining customers off the lake ASAP (there were still at least half a dozen cars there).
I've created an album with a selection of photos from the whole trip, including some cute puppy shots, which you should all be able to see here.
So now I'm home from my adventure, two days early. I want to stress that I was never really worried for my personal safety, and if there had been fire on the road out of the marina, we would not have left that way unless ordered to do so by someone in charge. Wildfire has always been a reality of life in California -- it's part of the natural ecosystem here, to the point that September and October are known as "fire season", although of course the increasing frequency and intensity of fires is absolutely being driven by climate change. In my 35 years of California residency, this is by far the closest I've ever personally gotten to a fire, and the most concerned I've ever been about avoiding the danger. I'm really glad we all got out safely, and I wish the best to anyone who's still out there.
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I once was on an Amtrak train -- the Empire Builder -- as we passed very very close to a fire, I think in Eastern Washington. Like, there was a yard just outside a warehouse or something, and there were pallets and stuff like that on fire. I seem to recall being able to feel the heat through the window. It was at night so the flames were very visible and we saw the rest of the scene really by the light of the flames. I think that is the closest I have ever personally gotten to a fire.
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