Still Ablaze

Posted on November 5, 2007 in Santiago Fire

If there’s a column of smoke, I can’t see it. A great, transparent gray dishrag droops and spreads across the sky while life goes on. Garbage trucks lift the bins into their backs and dump the refuse of the past week. Gardeners noisily push leaf blowers and trim the lawns. The postman — wearing summer shorts and a pith helmet — delivers the mail. The fire won’t be coming back this way, but the helicopters keep flying over.

Yesterday, we ventured into [[Modjeska Canyon]]. A few charred trees had been aggressively trimmed — to the root or the trunk — and a white snow of ashes covered a few places. Black soot tumbled down the slopes to just across the street from the community store. Only a few houses had been burned either on ridgelines or in places where the fire had found a way over the treetops into their particular dale. I did not photograph the people cleaning up the debris nor the pygmy goats who had been put in a new pen next to the road. Why was there a huge stack of baled hay at the entrance to the gorge? I only noted these things in my mind so that I could write about them.

The Santiago Fire goes on. If we do not boast of having the largest fire in this last storm, it is certainly the longest lived.

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Did I mention that my sheriff pled not guilty to charges of corruption?