Posted by
skep41 on Sunday, October 28, 2007 11:54:43 AM
Can
you see my house in the photo? We weren't too close to this batch of
fires. The one in Malibu was just over the ridge four or five miles to
the northwest of us and the one at Stevenson Ranch was over the ridge a
dozen miles to the northeast of us. The main thing we got, being in the
foothills, was the wind. For four days it rushed and eddied and
reshaped our plants. All the seed pods were blown off our silk tree and
scattered everywhere. The wind knocked a few random branches off the
big pine in the backyard and it kind of pruned all the dead wood off
the larger ash trees on the hillside. The olive tree is indestructible
but the apple tree lost a branch or two. The rush of air knocked over
our two garden gnomes. George Bush with his fingers crossed behind his
back (Susan's idea, of course) was found lying face-down in the ferns.
The wind kept the ash from the fires from settling everywhere outside
like it did in the 2003 fires (when we could actually see the giant
tongues of flame in Santa Susanna Pass if we walked up to the top of
the hill) but dust and ash crept into the house and covered everything.
As the wind died down the smoke settled, making the sunsets and
sunrises and moonsets and moonrises spectacular and casting a gloomy
pall during the day. Of course the local TV guys got into the usual
hysteria but I have less and less to do with TV these days so I
experienced this fire more as observable phenomena without the kind of
insight you get from the local news. You could see the news helicopters
swarming towards Topanga on the first couple of days. There weren't any
of the big water-droppers overhead, their blades make a super-loud
WOCKWOCKWOCK noise as they fly over. I guess they weren't flying out of
the valley. Oh well. The whole dust, dryness, smokiness and the
undertone of low, intense whooshing noise gives a strange Pompeii-like
atmosphere to everything; there's a tinge of orange in the pallid
light, even at noon. The cats were unusually active and jumpy. Maisie
treed a baby tree rat in a rose bush but it managed to escape when she
lost interest. So, I just wanted to be less political for once. I get
too carried away, which is why I started this blog. Nobody really ever
pays attention to it and I can get it out of my system without feeling
so repressed by the left-wing world I live in. If I can just scream at
the top of my lungs where no one can hear me, whats the harm? Well, the
wind has died and changed direction. It actually rained a tiny bit
yesterday as I was driving down to Irvine to get my daughter's car's
smog certificate. So things are settling back to normal. I have a ton
of leaves to pick up and today I'm going to cut down the baby trees
trying to grow on the hillside. Bye!