“…A fresh map that I made
Now I’m going to get birth naked and bury my old soul
And dance on it’s grave”(1)
The wildfires that we in Northern California have gone through this summer were amazing. A couple of weeks after I last posted here, the Mendocino Complex fire entered into my life. If you dont know about it, it burned over 450,000 acres in the surrounding area where I live. The fire got to about 6 miles from my house. The problem with a fire in Northern California is that we stopped practicing proper forest management decades ago. That leaves our forests around where I live in an area overgrown with a bunch of small trees, 4-8 inches in diameter that die off because they are overgrown and ending up being a bunch of matches if a fire goes through.
Well the smoke here was like fog for about 6 weeks. We stayed inside and breathed through masks but I am not convinced that mitigated the damage the smoke did.
The Camp Fire, which burned the entire down of Paradise and affected life around here for another two weeks about a month ago, destroyed a community of 26, 000 and traumatized all the areas surrounding the town. I have friends who lost their homes up there.
What does this all mean? I dont know I just needed to write today and say hello to those people who are in my life who keep saying hello to me even if I go into my coping mechanism place of isolation.
Was thinking about my friend Jerry today. It was about 3 years ago when he decided to leave this place. Was talking with a friend of ours about him the other day. It always come back to the same thing.