Usually when I wake up with my hair smelling like campfire, it means the night was a good one. This morning, it just meant I slept with the window open.
My community has made national news today, as wildfires tear their way through the hillsides that surround us. A few of my friends have lost their homes. Not their second-homes, not their just-for-entertaining-Napa-Lifestyle-homes, but their real life raising-a-family-and-making-sense-of-things homes. The air, and hearts, are heavy.
My winemaker husband spent the morning watching the news, calling off picks, and checking road closures for a safe route to his cellar. He was an uncanny image of the craftsman savant rocking back and forth in our living room, muttering, "My syrah is burning. My syrah is burning..." He's been up-valley and back all day, to see if his winery is still there (it is), and if the juice he's fermenting can pull through (it might).
It's funny where one can find places to direct anxiety on a day like this. You can't worry a fire away, or get annoyed enough that it just retreats. So I throw my frustrations at the local news channels: they've been covering fires in Santa Rosa all day, but they won't publish a simple map to show what areas of Napa are burning. I take the hurt I have for my friends, and I send it to the people who are lamenting on Facebook that they lost their honeymoon spot. Really? I think, they think they get a slice of this grief pie?
But mostly, when I'm not being petty, I know you simply have to make the day work. Locals who didn't receive evacuation orders were on house arrest, to keep roads and lungs clear(ish). Two children, their grandma, and me- stuck indoors until the ashes stop swirling out of the sky like snowflakes.
So what do you do when the hills are on fire? If you're stuck at home, the day is likely to be quite unremarkable, if not a little weird. I am a firm believer, however, that when life gives you a zinger, you and the rules get a little wiggle room. You have that third cup of coffee. You finally go through the mail, and actually peruse the fashion catalogs that found their way in. You eat gingerbread pancakes for lunch. If you're young enough, you paint in nothing but your underwear and an apron. (This was my daughter's favorite.) You pack a bag just in case you need to leave... and you pick just a few wines to include too. You invite the neighbors over for soup. Because, short of leaving town, there's not much else you can do with children underfoot and ashes in the air.
Tonight after I got the kids to bed, my bedraggled husband and I stepped outside to look at the horizon. It's a view we often take in with a glass of wine in-hand, but this evening we needed to keep it brief. The hills to our east are silhouetted in a vibrant red crest- it looks like the volcano photos we've seen in our son's picture books. Tomorrow will likely be more of the same; the fires are not contained and our modern comforts of electricity and cell phone service are likely to be spotty. My children and I will do what we do best this harvest: find friends, keep sane, be together. The best we can hope for is another day that is quite unremarkable, if not a little weird.