Falls Fires

I had pulled the photograph of the flower in its final stages of life and planned to write about fall in relation to the changing cycles of life. However, I first went to reading and editing my memoir as I'm getting ready to send a blast of queries into the Ethernet. As I wrote, I noticed that the building across the parking lot had taken on a strange orangy color and out my high windows on the north side, I saw clouds that glowed as if the sun was trying to shine through them and somehow couldn't. I was curious.

I stepped outside and smelled it. Smoke. I walked to the street and looked across the fields into the hills where I saw the smoke billowing into the sky. One of the late summer and early fall dangers in Colorado is that of wildfires. This year we had such a wonderfully wet earlier summer that what was lush grass has yellowed and the high vegetation is fodder for any spark that lights on it.

Back inside, I switched on the TV. What is being called the Four Mile Canyon fire was being reported on by Denver reporters still on their way to the fire site. They had already spoken with a family who had lost their home. A woman from a nearby canyon community called in to say she was evacuating her home. I had considered driving up Boulder Canyon past Nederland to hike today. I would have been on the other side of the fire zone and my easy access to Boulder would have been blocked off.

Smoke has now covered our recently blue sky. Ash is beginning to float in the air as if it was very light snow. That is little hardship compared to those who are trying to save their homes. It is cooler today--down from the high 90s yesterday to the 70s today, but the winds have been whipping around the 30 mph range, up to 65 mph in gusts. They say the humidity is under 10% in our area.

Those of us who can see and smell the smoke from a safe distance cannot help but realize how lucky we are. It takes such a short time for fires to whip around hills and from tree top to tree top--for lives to be changed.

It is with gratitude for my safety and that of Michelle and her family, and with prayers for those who are fighting the fire and those who have and will suffer losses, that I go back to my memoir. I'll write about changing cycles of life on another day. And I'll be checking on the status of the fire with friends and the news media--and praying for the winds to calm.