Deb's Account

I’m watching footage of the LA fires on my phone – images of frightened horses, compliant as their rescuers lead them through the smoke, wildlife racing the fire lines, evacuees wide eyed with confusion.  Their pain and fear are too big to be contained by my tiny screen.  It eases over the edges and spills onto me.  I am there.  But no, I am here observing helplessly from a safe distance.

            It started as so many fires here do, a notification on a fire watch ap.  Then the tell-tale sign of smoke.  Then the smell, like a comfort at first.  You check online and consult the unreliable narrators.  Or you check with Candice and Joe at the hardware store because they have a sheriff’s radio.  And you wait.

            What I took was the usual; 2 small dogs, one feral cat who suddenly became domestic on evacuation day and went willingly into the carrier.  I packed Greg’s short list as he was in Texas.  I gathered all our original art and non-digitized photos, sundry valuables, an old .22 my grandfather left me, some jewelry, passports and cash.  I felt like a fugitive on the lam.  The most important of these is the letters.  Four bins of letters, organized by year, from my very best friend, Jenn.  We’d been writing to each other since I moved from our small town at 15.  Sometimes two letters a month, sometimes two a week, all chronicling our lives.  She has bins of her own full of my letters.  The handwriting has changed a bit, and the quality of the paper and cards has improved, but for the past 43 years these letters have been a staple in our lives.  This epistolary relationship is the longest commitment either of us have had.  The letters are proof we had the adventures, the deep thoughts and emotions, the petty complaints.  Proof that we were here.  I drove around for weeks with those bins in the back of my car, even after the danger of fire was passed.

            The initial, official evacuation was harried.  I gathered the belongings, the daughter, the pets and the letters and fled to my in-laws in a neighboring town far out of reach of Caldor.  What I left behind was a small herd of sweet cows and a flock of spoiled chickens.  I overfed everyone and hoped for the best.

            My mother and father-in-law are wonderful people and made Olivia and I feel welcome.  But I was wild with worry.  Greg was in Texas at the time, working with the Bending Branch production team on crush.  When I realized I had to leave the cows, I broke a little.  He flew home that night.

            This time of the fire is a bit hazy, as if none of us were thinking clearly, as if our breathing was too shallow.  Greg would go to our place to feed the cows and chickens.  There was a deputy at the entrance to our private road, allowing people in for an hour to tend to their properties.  I continued to home school our daughter, Olivia, and take her to her activities.  Keeping calm and carrying on. 

            Driving around town we saw evidence of the war being waged in the forest surrounding our community.  People were camped out at the Walmart and the fairgrounds.  Horses were corralled in parking lots. The sky was orange and disorienting.  Fire crews arrived from all over the western states, their counties’ names broadcast across their trucks. I thanked one firefighter for her service then burst into tears.  She said, “You’re welcome, ma’am.”  Because she was raised right.

            It seemed, for a bit, that the fire was being held at bay.  There was no longer a deputy at the entrance of our road. We were on our own. And there were rumors of looters.  So Greg & I packed our essentials, leaving our belongings in the garage of his parents’, and returned home.

            We came home to a thick mat of soot on all the outdoor surfaces.  The air was dirty.  But the house was standing.  We checked the winery, which remained cool inside if a little smoky.  The wine in the barrels was silent and unknowing, removed from the drama unfolding mere miles away.

            We busied ourselves with chores, distracted by minutia.  That first afternoon home I heard our 8-pound chi-poo on alert.  I was in the laundry room when Greg stepped in, furtive, and whispered “You’ve got to see this.”  I followed him silently to where Vespa was barking.  Just outside of our house, on the edge of the pond, stretched a mountain lion, eating something.  She turned her bloodied face to look at us, then went back to her meal.  I scooped Vespa up and the three of us walked stiffly back to the house and locked the door.  We thought that day, and later that night, that this was a rare encounter.

            It turned out that during our absence a mother lion and her two cubs, (a juvenile maybe a year old and a “small” cub of about 50 pounds, still fuzzy with baby fur), took up residence in the space under our deck, directly below our daughter’s bedroom window.  Greg and I were fascinated.  We kept the dogs indoors and on leash.  I was so proud of this lion who hustled her cubs to a safe place, ripe with resources.  There was a pond and the wildlife it attracted.  Unfortunately, they broke into the chicken house leaving no survivors and a lion-sized hole in the steel fencing.  When that food ran out, they ate raccoons.  Greg was outside when a raccoon ran right by him in broad daylight.  The raccoon was followed closely by a lion, near enough to Greg that he could feel the breeze from its passing.  To this day we have no raccoons when there used to be dozens.

            I wanted to get some air one evening when Greg stopped me from going outside, staying me with a nod to the window.  The yearling was on our porch, sniffing the grill.  We would watch them from the safety of our deck.  The cub liked to play at the pond, scaring frogs and surprised by their splashes as they dashed away.  We could hear its mother call in that urgent way of mothers, chirping like a bird rather than a lion.  I think that was the most surprising of all.  Their vocalizations were high, complicated, some birdlike, others human sounding.

            The only time I think we felt real fear was that first night, before we realized there were three and that they’d actually moved in.  It was night.  Greg wanted to see the glow of the fire from the winery.  We took our open-sided gator down the winery road, using a Maglite for navigating in the dark.  Greg stopped the gator and asked me to shine the light “over there”.  Twenty feet away, three sets of round, reflective eyes were coming toward us.  They swayed with the steady, rhythmic saunter that is unique to big cats.  They did not look away; they did not veer.  There was no time or space to turn our vehicle around.  I flipped the light behind us and Greg backed us up, all the way home.   That fear was prehistoric, focused and cold.  I’ve never felt anything like it, before or since.

            For nearly a year after our final return home, we kept a lion stick by the door.  It was actually a wooden fencing pole with a pointed end.  We carried it with us whenever we left the house, even if it was a quick trip to the wood shed.  We see traces of lions on our property still, but they keep a healthy distance.  They’ve moved on, spreading out as the area regains its environmental equilibrium.

            The second evacuation came when a fire fighter stopped by the house and told us the fire was headed our way and we needed to leave within the hour.  This time we were better prepared.  We went to Greg’s sister’s house in El Dorado Hills, a newer area with lots of green landscaping and large new homes.  It felt safe.  Sharon made us elaborate meals that we ate at the dining room table.  We drank wine and watched HGTV.  Our stay there was an oasis in a time of unsurety.  One evening I got a call from my father.  My mother had a stroke.  We weren’t sure how bad it was.  I decided to pack up the little dogs, by now seasoned evacuees, and went to my parents’ in the East Bay.  Greg & Olivia stayed with Sharon.  We were a family in limbo.

            When I’m scared or overwhelmed, I check out mentally.  Some people call this disassociating.  Some people call this a disorder. I call it a skill and it has always worked for me.  On the surface I was helping Olivia with school via Zoom, helping my mother with her physical therapy, helping my father with meals.  But inside I was floating above everything, the Mars-like landscape of a forest fire, the inevitable mortality of our loved ones.  I was floating too high above it all to tether the what-ifs and other worldly worries.

            One afternoon I was sitting with my mother in her bedroom.  I’d turned the cream upholstered wingchairs in the lounge area from facing the bed to facing the bay window.  This allowed a view of the golden hills surrounding Mount Diablo.  It was peaceful as we sat in silence, she watching the hawks, me on my phone.  I happened upon a video of a reporter following firefighters down our road on Facebook Live.  Grainy and dark, the alien light made the landmarks unfamiliar.  Yet there was Megan & Gerry’s house.  And now approaching Don and Dee’s.  Our house would be next.  I watched as they unceremoniously drove by the Ursa sign at our entrance.  I looked at my mother sitting next to me, silently staring at the view from her new and uncharacteristic nonverbal state.  I returned to my screen.  The reporter had stopped a quarter mile beyond our property, at the fire line.  This is where the fight was, which would determine the future of Ursa Vineyards and our family.  I saw flames.  I saw people scrambling.  I saw my neighbors’ properties literally going up in smoke. I looked at my mother again.  She smiled at me.

            In 2020, Sonoma and Napa experienced the Glass Fire, as if 2020 hadn’t been difficult enough.  The Glass Fire, like the Tubbs Fire before, happened in the midst of harvest.  It’s been said that California has added a season to her year, fire season.  The frequency of fires in the months between July and October have added the challenge of dealing with smoke taint to the winemaker’s repertoire.  Of course, at the time we thought it was a “them” problem. Until now.  We mapped out our local vineyards and their proximity to the fire.  We crossed our fingers.

            The fruit arrived that year in various states of affectedness, depending on the vineyard’s location.  Some lots reeked of smoke, the stink clinging to the oily skins of the berries.  It permeated skin to the meat of the fruit and settled in the juice.  We tasted and retasted in the cellar.  We talked to other winemakers and industry suppliers.  Greg and Kyle searched the internet for others’ experiences.  Everyone was trying different things and generously sharing their results.  Nothing worked completely, but some things helped.  Finally, Greg decided to stop trying to mask the problem.  We’ve always let the fruit lead in our wines.  Why not embrace the true nature of vintage and express the fire’s effect rather than burying it.  Greg put the blend together and he and Kyle fine tuned it.  We tasted and retasted until we agreed on the Caldor Red. We feel this wine is a true expression of that vintage and the spirit of optimism & courage exhibited by the firefighters.

            I’ve thought of those firefighters often.  After the fire was contained and we returned to a careful normalcy, signs appeared everywhere.  Signs that read, “Thank you, firefighters, first responders, helpers.”  Signs with hearts and flames painted on them. Signs with American flags and pinwheels. These signs could not convey enough the gratitude that we all felt but it was all we had. Towards the final containment, I would see these firefighters at the market, sooty faced and gritty.  They were young and strong and brave.  I imagine they were also having the time of their lives, testing their strength and talents against the fire.  They were bonding with their teams, exercising their hard-earned knowledge.  They were treated like the heroes that they are but it never felt to me like enough.

            I am writing this by the woodstove.  Its fire is warm, cozy, controlled.  I feed it pieces of trees from our property.  The irony is not lost on me.  The Caldor Fire has been inextricably tied up, for me,  with the decline and eventual loss of my mother. It took me a long time to walk in the burnt-out woods near my home.  I didn’t drive to the center of the destruction until Greg took me to Silver Lake two years and a lifetime later.  My mother had been gone for a few months by then.  I’d been busy working alongside my sister and father, attending to all the distractions the death of a loved one brings.  I hadn’t cried yet. Not really.  I was still writing thank you notes.  As we drove up the mountain, the devastation became more apparent.  Where there were forests thick with the scent of pine and cedar was now blackened poles. The once grey green carpeting acres of National Forest was charcoal, shades of a different grey. A mountainside stretched above us, denuded and still smelling of ash.  And then I cried.  I cried for all the losses, the trees that won’t return in my lifetime, the silencing of birdsong, the end of the forest experience, at least in our neck of the woods.  And finally, I cried for the loss of my mother.