There's A Fire On The Mountain...This Time, It's Not Our Mountain

Because of social media, we can instantly be informed of events around the block or around the world. This afternoon news hit of a mountain fire located a few miles to the north of us. It's been a windy day and wind, hot weather, and tall weeds equals potential loss of property, or worse.

Believe me--I know what those people living near the fire are going through.

We lived it twice, once in 2003, and again ten years later in 2013.

The last couple of years the western United States have been on fire. Two summers ago we drove to Seattle to attend my nephew's wedding. Oregon was ablaze; Washington State was, too. Near Portland they closed the interstate. Fortunately, we turned off before the road was closed, but on the way home from the wedding, the smoke was so thick in some areas, it was difficult to see even a few hundred feet ahead.

This year (and maybe it's because I have been so busy and not paying attention to other stuff...) it feels like it hasn't been a bad fire season. Until recently, that is. In the space of a couple of weeks, there's been several fires close to where we live. Luckily for us, we've not had one hit above our home since 2013.

Because I was blogging in 2013, I blogged about that and posted several pictures of the event. You can access that particular blog post by clicking: HERE. Having a fire so close to home is both terrifying and amazing. Everything--everything--smells like smoke. Even your clothes inside the house smells like smoke days later, but at night, the scene is so surreal watching the mountain burn. The 2013 fire was nowhere near as big as the 2003 fire. That one was huge. Thankfully, no homes were lost in either one.

Like anything, living on the side of a hill comes with positives and negatives. Sure, the views are incredible, but mountainside fires usually don't threaten valley homes and then there's the potential for mudslides caused by the burned vegetation. Pros and cons in everything.

I don't know the status of the latest blaze as I write this. The wind died down in this afternoon and it looked like it might rain, but then the wind picked up again so it could be much much worse than it was earlier. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow. We're all praying it's right. No, mountain fires are something no one wants, but when they happen, we deal with them and the aftermath. I guess it's just part of life.

This time, it happened a few miles north. A couple of weeks ago, the fire was a few miles to the south. I wonder if in 2023 we'll have another one on our mountain. I sure hope not.

Capturing The Fire On The Mountain...

"Look at that!" my daughter said as we pulled into the parking lot of a local grocery store. Of course I saw it--it was spectacular. Above us the sky blazed in orange and red and the mountains caught the colors as they reflected off the sky. "It's beautiful," she said. And it was.

Because it was so amazing, I wondered if I could capture the scene in a picture. I pulled out my phone and tried.

Some would say I was successful. When I looked at the pictures when I got home, one shot came close, one was way off--that picture's the one below. I wish I could have found a more advantageous vantage point to take a picture, but with photography, as with life, you have to make due with what you're given.

I must say, when it comes to taking pictures of sunsets, I've been spoiled. Except in the winter when there's less sunlight, I'm usually at home when the sun sets in the west. Most nights I'll go to our back porch and see what we've been given. With sunsets, as with life, you make due with what you're given.

Point is, I usually havec a vantage point to get a good picture when the sunset is photo-worthy. When I saw the sky explode above us at the grocery store, I was where I was. And even though the finished product wasn't what I would have wanted, I'll always have the picture to remind me of the night my daughter and I saw the fire on the mountain. And, after all, isn't that what a picture is for anyway?