It made me shudder on a day like today. Maybe it's just some olfactory manifestation of memory one year on. Maybe just coincidence. Regardless, the memories came back.
A clear blue sky, cloudless. That's how these stories always begin, right? But it's important, because the immaculate, clean, pure sky is such a contrast for what's to come. It's never good. We look back on those pristine moments longingly, wishing with all we are that it could somehow erase the horror that came later.
It was windy. Bright and sunny. There's that blue sky again, swept clean of lingering fog and agricultural particulate. As I made my way to the office on some errand during my prep time I noticed a strange cloud. It seemed to originate from the very horizon, like a volcanic plume. It was due north and visible right between the main office building and our gymnasium. That's not right, I thought.
The southern California valley where I grew up, surrounded on all sides by rugged hills covered in waving grasses, dense shrubs, and a scattering of oak trees, as it was, created something of a regular tinderbox. These hills became a Hellscape every fall as the fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the flames into the sky, creating panic and apocalyptic scenes. (And still do today.) Now, I was looking at something familiar, but it took me a moment to recognize the frightening sight. My stomach dropped. I asked a colleague nearby what they thought.
"Just a cloud."
"With the wind, though?" I said. "That's no cloud."
All summer fires had been igniting and threatening all around the northern California valley I now called home. Here was another. Easy to dismiss as just a typical part of California life. I asked around, but no one had heard anything. I finished my task and went out to check again. Indeed, the plume was growing, filling the sky with darkness. I tried a quick search on my phone before returning to class and found a mention of something called the Camp Fire, out near Paradise.
"I've been to Paradise" was once something I liked to say in conversation. Back when I was young and adventurous, (read: dumb), I'd gone with friends for a chance to jump off cliffs and, maybe, drink beer in the sun. We meandered our way to a place called Buzzard's Roost. On the way we'd stopped in town for, um, supplies. It dawned on me that it was pretty cool to actually get to visit a place called paradise. I was certain that it was an amazing thing. I was struck by the notion that others should know it actually existed and that you could, like, go there!
Now, years later, it was on fire. There at school, I knew it was bad, but not the full extent. Only later would we all learn that Paradise pretty much burned to the ground. Harrowing tales of survivors fleeing the inferno have been widely reported. Eighty-five people perished and one can only hope their suffering was short in duration. By that afternoon, the smell of smoke was obvious everywhere around my campus more than eighty miles away. The north wind pushed the smoke right down into the valley, draping a suffocating blanket over our part of the world for weeks.
In the end, Paradise burned down and it's not some Joni Mitchell song. It happened. It's hard not to hear that, to see the devastation, to mourn the loss of life, to wonder just how it happened. To wonder, What in the Hell is going on? It is easy to jump to conclusions and think that the sky is falling, especially when last year, it really seemed to do just that. Everything seemed to be burning. Everywhere.
A year later and the town of Paradise is rising up, remembering. Paradise is not lost. It is resilient. But how far toward the brink can we go and still recover? Every tragedy takes a little bit from us all, the cost to replenish our souls a little heavier every time.
