Outside The Box

Griping is easier than gratitude, and since the internet made comedians of us all, it’s usually funnier. Not so funny the algae growing back on the deck I’ve prepped twice for painting this year. I’ll soon be pressure washing the side of the house for the third time this year, and just what is that black stuff forming on the ROPS canopy of the tractor?

Yes, and it’s time to mow again – again. That tall wet stuff is very happy with the amount of precipitation we’ve been getting. The sun shines out and the ground looks dry, but take two steps and your boots are wet. Good thing that the pressure washer is already out to dislodge the mat of wet clippings that will stick to the mower. The tangle of birdweed in the fallow patch down by the creek is downright jubilant, but that celebration is about to be interrupted by a weed-killing propane torch.

Which reminds me of how soon we forget. It was only 8 years ago that the ground was so dry I was reluctant to strike a match, much less light a torch. A dry weather pattern began in the spring of 2016, and by October, our entire region was under severe to exceptional drought.

We were conserving water in late August that year while creeks ran dry and wells dried up in the area. In October, the Rough Ridge, Tellico, and Boteler Fires began burning. The Party Rock, Rock Mountain, and Tatum Gulf Fires joined the conflagration in November.

Tracey and I were on Jekyll Island in early November when we spoke with a neighbor back home who said that the Rock Mountain Fire had crossed the ridge into our valley, and so began the adventure of a lifetime.

As we started for home that evening, the moon rose orange out of the east. The smoke from several fires had traveled from the mountains to the sea. We stopped at a Home Depot and picked up a couple of N95 respirators. By the time we reached Gainesville to stop for the night, you could taste the air, which resembled the industrial smog of a 1950s movie based in London.

We were home by mid-morning the next day, and as we headed down the road into our little cove, you could see the fire creeping down the mountain towards the valley. The wind was not in our favor. The community was under a pre-evacuation alert, which means you get ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

We spent the next couple of days working on a fuel break above the house, under-groving, dragging brush, and blowing leaves. The ground was so dry and dusty that the leaf blowers created an unbreathable miasma of particulates to add to the smoke. Tracey wore a surplus IDF gas mask I had bought for her as a joke gift, and it turned out to be a lifesaver. To this day, we keep a pair of those masks in our ready kit, just in case.

While crews from around the country battled the Rock Mountain Fire to our east, the Boteler Fire in Clay County, NC, spread rapidly to our west. We were squeezed between 9000 and 10,500 acre blazes, both on our doorstep. Ashes fell and blew like a skiff of snow, covering the buildings and vehicles before the strong winds swept them away.

Wildlife escaping the fires crowded into the valley. We had never seen so many birds, deer, bears, and wild hogs. One pack of hogs did us a great favor by first digging up my sweet potatoes without taking a single bite and then plowing a fuel break all the way from the garden 300 feet to the road. A mama bear and her two cubs born the previous January bedded down almost within sight of our house, unfazed by the sound of our chainsaw and leaf blowers.

When the fuel break was finally finished as best we could manage, we setup a gravity-fed sprinkler system above the house, which made sooty surreal icicles on the chill November mornings. Our bugout bags were packed and loaded onto the vehicle, documents stored in a fireproof safe, and the bugout list was made and posted: Cut the power. Stuff the cats into carriers and load up the pups. Open the chicken pen to provide them an escape route, and hope for the best.

At the church down the road, there was a tremendous amount of activity. A command center for the fire had been set up there, and the folks at the church worked tirelessly collecting donations and feeding the firefighters. They were busy praying as well. On 18 November, a cold front brought sustained winds and gusts of up to 40 mph. It tested the containment lines, but the wind also pushed the fire back onto itself and slowed the advance toward our valley. That weekend finally brought some desperately needed rain, which allowed the firefighters to secure their lines. The worst was over.

I’ll think of these things this afternoon while I’m sweating in the tropical humidity and hoping I can collect all my tools and get them back into the shop before today’s thunderstorm catches us out. Green is pretty, and pressure washing is fun… well, the first ten minutes or so. Not so much the next three or four hours. But I’m grateful for the rain. Over 120,000 acres burned in Georgia and North Carolina alone in 2016, and the memory of bugout bags advises me against praying for a dry spell.