It was such a great place to live when we believed in the climate. When we lived at that house, there was the Bear fire six miles (iirc) from our house.

(It was arson. This absolutely psychotic looking tweaker was living at a property with a bunch of other tweakers where they’d strip stolen cars and twitch. He got in a fight with somebody else and set the goddamn forest on fire. When they arraigned him, he pointed at the DA and mouthed “you’re next” 😂 He got 27 years in jail and I can’t say I’m unhappy about that.)

We loaded our go bags, but we didn’t evacuate. I honestly can’t remember what I was feeling, but I almost always dissociate through really stressful situations.

The Bear fire started about a week after the Camp fire destroyed Paradise. The Camp fire was still burning when that fucker set our forest on fire. What the fuck, y’all.

Anyway, we told ourselves that our fire was different, because there wasn’t an evac order for our area, because redwoods live in a temperate rainforest where it rains a lot, because there hadn’t been a really big fire there for a hundred years.

(You may note some extremely dangerously wrong conclusions. Herd mentality is *wild* when it works.)