Fire

You eventually get tired of hearing about fires. At least I did anyway. My last season in fire, 19 firefighters burned alive. We had already submitted paperwork with our dentists' contact information, in case our bodies were ever burned so badly that dental records were our only means of identification.

I read through the article Mike's mom sent me about the fires in wine country, just in case she ever asked me about it. But I already knew enough, and didn't care to know anymore. We parked our research truck in the ashes of Fountain Grove and scanned the atmosphere through the night, and watched the Nun's Fire burn in the distance. Mansions reduced to ash and melted metal, whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. And the people. The people who couldn't get out in time. An officer showed me a picture of one he found- nothing but a few vertebrae to differentiate concrete from human. 

But you never do leave fire behind. For 14 years I have made a living off the tendency for California to burn. People from out of state will tell you they'd be terrified to live in a place where the ground shakes occasionally. Maybe because we all want to believe that the ground beneath our feet is solid, and won't one day fall out from underneath us. But I don't suspect my home will ever be lifted off the ground and deposited a few miles away in a pile of wooden shards by an unpredictable vortex of spinning air.

Yet everything burns. The article is from Alta- Journal of Alta California. I was going to read through it, then send it to the recycling bin so I didn't have to think about it anymore. Instead, it sits face up on my coffee table, flames illuminating the face of a male firefighter. I hate that my thesis involves this fire. I don't want to be part of the "everyone" who is talking about, researching, that fire. But I am. So I hold on to the journal, in case I need it.

During your emergency response training, they teach you that you will get called on the worst day of someone's life. You get called because something goes horribly wrong. You don't get called because someone is having a wonderful birthday party. You don't get called to the neighborhood where all is quiet and all is well. I thought I would become a meteorologist and learn to predict rainfall, and leave my fire days behind. But it's what I know. It's what I understand. And that understanding propelled me into years of research, and then into my new job.... still studying fire, and making a good living off of it. Fire is a parasite. It gets into your blood and becomes permanent. People want to talk to you about it, ask you about it, show you articles and ask if you've seen the movie.

I've lived it. I live it. I am not a moth drawn to the flames. I have walked through those fires and will never shake the embers from my shirt, or the smoke from my hair.