I've been worrying about the fire, so sleeping has been difficult, so I'm tired, but I'm okay. We had to get up early today and clean for Donna and Gorden to come over because Gorden was coming to show Mike how to fix the dryer.

I drove to get groceries for lunch in town.

The whole hillside is black for miles. One place was an island of homes in the midst of a charred black forest. You could tell that that was where firefighters must have been making a stand to save houses. The worst night was on Thursday, when they closed the highway. I could only watch the flames rip up the hill, I can only imagine what homeowners must have felt to be forced to leave and just wait and wonder if their home would be there in the morning and how frightened and heroic firefighters had to be to prevent it from jumping the road and keep it from burning any of those houses, after losing a bunch earlier in the day in the other canyon. Seeing the blackened trees on the ridge as I approached, the tears started. When I saw the island, and tears started rolling down my cheeks. I couldn't help it. I saw a couple helicopters picking up loads of retardant and I felt more heartened, but the lump in my throat remained -- I could see the smoking canyons, the eerie shadowed ground behind the hovering copter.

But more than anything, I feel humbled and thankful. I was humbled by the sheer magnitude of the destruction. The high school letter on the hill was surrounded by blackened ground, for example. I was thankful that they didn't let it jump across the road, where it could have come to our house and taken away our home and at the same time, they protected that island of houses.
I know it's only stuff and it's all replaceable, but a lot of those people are elderly people who should be able to relax in their old age -- not start again, not endure having to figure out where they would live for the next year or so while their house got rebuilt.

I liked what one of the people who lost his home said in reply to a question about whether or not he would rebuild: "Oh, yeah! I'm rebuilding! Now, that it's burnt, there won't be a fire here for a long long time."

You go, cowboy.