Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Of Fire and Water


Water was on my mind this morning as I donned my rain shoes, like every other morning this soggy winter. That’s when I noticed the tiny rubber blister near the right toe. It’s a souvenir of years of men’s group meetings at my friend Bob’s house. Unless it was pouring rain you would find us sitting around a fire pit under an oak tree every Tuesday night, as his man-made waterfall trickled into his koi pond nearby. 

The blister brought me back to fire. It was a product of warming my feet too close to the fire on a rainy night. Fire and water. Two destructive forces that have ravaged our community in recent times. 

A few years ago I elected to trade in one men’s group for another. It was a matter of Tuesday night commitments. I took the opportunity to join a band called Old On Meds. We met at Tony’s house, a mile and a half up Mark West Springs Road from Bob’s mini farm. There was a half-mile long private road that wound through the woods to get to Tony’s property. In a separate little building Tony had set up his very own recording studio. It would house my drums for years, along with all the guitars, amps, speakers, computers and 16 track mixing boards that comprise such an endeavor. I would sit with my back to a set of French doors that opened to a spectacular view of rolling mountains as the bass player’s dog, Rickie, would lick my hands whenever we began to play. There would be years of musical memories made there, including adding a Rickie-Lickie towel to my drum kit, so I could dry my hands.

A series of catastrophic fires began in the area a few years ago. The first came out of Lake County and moved south, consuming whole mountains in its path, ravaging the town of Middletown and destroying a beloved hot springs resort called Harbin. Tony and I, both being pilots, eventually took to the air with a photographer in the back of the plane. The fire was still technically burning, though I couldn’t see any smoke, as we overflew the area at a minimum of 7,500 feet. The photographer had a 600-millimeter lens. I had a list of addresses given to us by landowners who were concerned to find out if their homes still existed. We did the best we could. It was difficult to navigate among ash. It took us the better part of an hour to circumnavigate the whole disaster. It stretched all the way from Clear Lake to Lake Berryessa. One couldn’t help but feel bad for the locals who lost everything in the devastation far below. Little did we know what fire would soon bring our way. 

In October of 2018 my wife had joined her brother Dennis, a Santa Rosa resident, in driving to Southern California for a wedding. I was home alone at 4 AM when a series of forceful knocks at the front door roused me from a deep sleep. I stumbled downstairs as my brain tried the make sense of the situation. It quickly informed that it must be my wife, Robin, having returned home early and discovering she didn’t have her keys. That thought balloon quickly burst as I opened the door to find a female police officer standing there. 

“Fire! Get out now!’

Now my brain had new material to chew on, starting with WTF? I shut the door and walked to the kitchen to look out the back where two mountains, Taylor Mountain and Sonoma Mountain, gently fold into one another. One of them (or both?) was on fire. The sky glowed orange and 40-foot flames licked upward, consuming trees. Holy shit!

I got dressed as fast as humanly possible. Now my brain had a new job and, believe me, it wasn’t firing on all cylinders at that hour. What do I grab on the run with the prospect of losing everything else. It came down to about five things: an oil painting of Meher Baba, a small safe containing important papers, two computers and a wolf puppet from one of our TV shows.


I retreated to a friend’s house farther south where I was joined by other local evacuees for a long, tense afternoon, wondering if everything in your life is gone. I didn’t talk to Robin until later. There was no sense in waking her early to cut her in on the trauma, especially when I didn’t know what to tell her about the outcome, except that I was okay. By the afternoon we were allowed back into our neighborhood under voluntary evacuation status. I took advantage to stuff my car with more belongings, including a trunk now full of puppets. It looked like a Mafia hit job on Sesame Street. 

The wind was kind to all of us in Rohnert Park. It blew the fire southward towards Penngrove. Over the next couple of days volunteers from a local construction company, Ghilotti Brothers, tore up the pastures that surround our home with plows and bulldozers, creating a huge fire break. We dodged a bullet.

Bob and Tony did not. They both lived in the canyon that funneled the fire from its origins in Calistoga down into San Rosa, crossing the freeway and adding 1,000 homes in the Coffey Park neighborhood to its list of victims. Along that route it also destroyed the home of my friend Brian Fies. A graphic novelist, he immediately began chronicling the horror he experienced and funneled into a book called A Fire Story (published by Abrams). It is personal, powerful and universal all at the same time. Read it if you want to understand the experience that thousands have gone through. 

My wife Robin and her brother stayed with their mother near Ojai for two weeks while those of us up north trudged around looking like a nation of surgeons as we attempted to breathe through our masks. Her brother Dennis lives in an area called Fountaingrove. It is a mountain covered in spectacular homes. Or, I should say, it was. The whole place lit up like a birthday cake. Access to the ruins of this fire was not available until the day they drove up from the south. It was first day we saw blue sky around here and they soon learned that Dennis’ low-lying street was the only one remaining on the mountain. 

It was around that time that I was finally able to drive up to Tony’s house to see if it survived. Getting there was disorienting. A world, once familiar, is not when it is torched. Tony’s house was a pile of twisted roof metal. The recording studio was nothing, save for a sliver of concrete foundation along the front. I stood on it and looked down the hill, hoping that Ziljian cymbals might survive a conflagration. How naive. The only thing I could recognize in the ash was the circular shape of my Ludwig snare drum’s top ring. Surrounding me were hardened puddles of melted metals and plastic, as if a huge candle had once stood there.

On the bright side, Tony barely escaped with his life. One of his neighbors did not. He was forced to drive through six miles of blowtorch fire to reach safety. But he did. So did Bob and his wife, retreating in their motor home to the safety of Dillon Beach temporarily. I gathered together some clothes and size 13 shoes and drove out there. Bob asked me to give him a lift to the local store, which I did. My jaw dropped when I saw that all he bought was a small Duraflame Fire Starter log. It’s cold out at the beach. He needed one. I photographed him holding it proudly in front of his motor home. We all needed a laugh. 

This brings me back to the blister on my boot. From the fire. Every Tuesday night. At Bob’s house. When I eventually went back there to survey the damage I missed the driveway. Once again, the landscapes have become unrecognizable. There is no more fire circle. Or home. The beautiful koi pond is a dark pit of sludge. 

Bob has a new home now. So does Tony. We all move on. I’m still searching for good cymbals. My rain shoes are starting to fall apart. The rubber blister has even cracked. They’ll carry me through the rest of this soggy season but by next winter I better get a new pair. It is always time to move on. And count one’s blessings along the way.


No comments: