Fire in Oregon

  Tuesday Night.

   It’s 10:33 PM in the fine little cabin at the New World Farmstead run by my sister Genie, her Husband Glenn and their daughter Emma. We are about 15 minutes our of downtown Eugene but very rural. The Douglas pines tower over the small cabin I am in, that looks out on the Barn, Chicken Coops, the new house being built and the little valley.

  The generator was just switched off as is done to save fuel at night. The internet stops working, I have 31% charged laptop that might last me to finish this journal entry. 

   ‘Get out of California and have some clean air to breathe..’ a friend told me the day before I left in an encouraging way. I had told him of my plans and responded that Oregon probably had fires too.

From the frying pan into the fire, a fine adventure, I think it shall be, even as Fire crews battle a blaze that started apparently the day I arrived and that has many people evacuated from their homes, probably a few (hopefully only) perished in the blaze in the town of Blue River west of us. The Fire would have to cross I-5 and the Willamette River to reach here. Someone else said if the winds picked up the fire could reach here in 3 hours, I doubt that scenario, right now and much of the day the winds seemed to have stopped as is predicted for tomorrow. 

   The smoke filled area created this chill to the air, sun blocked, temps in the afternoon of about 60. Strange … Monday when I arrived it was clear blue sky temps around 90. We had a delightful picnic dinner on Monday evening out on the lawn with the family not only had I arrived but a ‘woofer’ (something like World Organic Optimist Farmers entry Rebels) had arrived that day and a friend dropped in so we were having this … delightful time…. Hah! Now that I think about it, the yellow jackets who it seemed were going to ruin the dinner left us alone… probably had nothing to do with things but by the time we were putting things away we could smell and almost taste smoke drifting in. We looked at the trees swaying and wondered which way the fire was coming from.

  By the time I headed off to ‘my’ cabin the wind had really picked up. There was talk that maybe I could sleep in the unfinished house but I didn’t think I had to worry about falling trees. I won’t even get into (right) the weirdness of some animal trapped somehow within the walls of the cabin … driving me crazy. For 30 minutes I tried to figure it out what it was, where it was, it would stop and then go off, this while the wind was gusting and small branches were dropping all around. The darnedest thing.. sad, weird I wasn’t going to sleep with this going on. I made plans to move down to the unfinished house, bring futons, bedding etc at first trip I paused at the doorway looking back up towards the hillside of pines, the cabin, the barn to the left … the wind was whipping, gusting. You can only imagine what flames somewhere were doing, as you could smell the smoke, hear the wind …. 

 Then I heard what I thought was a boom from the barn (maybe Genie says it was just the big Barn Door on its tracks getting getting caught the wrong way by a strong gust, and banging against the structure… about the same time Looking back to the cabin there was another Boom or Pop or something and suddenly I am looking at a strange light show… this coming from behind the cabin illuminating pine trees from behind it probably lasted 5 seconds not much more… The Glow was Pink then Orange and …. All the lights went out. 

 (The power on the computer says only 10% and it is in the red and when it goes out I am going to bed.. )

    I got Glenn who was of course already coming out and we went up the hill to investigate.. anyhow cut to the chase… No fires in our backyard. Except the one that God Willing (you know the Fire teams are doing their job as best they can)  will be stopped still about 40 miles away.

     Talk about evacuation over today’s dinner table let’s see 8 goats… 30 chickens … don’t forget the damn geese. (Forget the Geese.) Glenn will be working on the evacuation trailer tomorrow morning… Still between I-5 and the river and a goodly number of highways and roads I don’t see any of that being necessary … but. That’s what is going on here. 

    Wonderful food, great people, having a wonderful time. Glad you are not here! Cheers!