We had another wildfire scare on Wednesday.
I say “another” as though it’s a regular thing; I suppose it hasn’t been so far. We’ve only had two prior pre-evacuation notifications in the eight years we’ve lived in Colorado. There was the time Beat discovered and called in a small fire on Bear Peak when he was out for one of his regular runs. The second was the NCAR Fire in March 2022. It started just one day after Beat and I had returned from separate trips that both involved marching through subzero temperatures in Alaska, which made the sudden specter of fire all the more surreal.
Winter can be the scariest time for fire in this region, as snow cover grows thinner each year while the West Wind rages unabated. We were out of town — isolated in the wilderness of Alaska’s White Mountains — when the Marshall Fire sparked on December 30, 2021. My friend Betsy texted me a short but alarming message: “Louisville and Superior are burning!” I received the text when I stepped outside to photograph the Northern Lights. It was 18 below where I stood outside Lee’s Cabin, surrounded by deep and untrammeled snow following a fearsome storm. I couldn’t conceptualize these two suburban cities burning in a wildfire — so far from the urban-wildland interface, and during the winter no less. Any theory I could form was so ominous and apocalyptic — like all of 2021 felt. A green ribbon of light rippled overhead and I wondered if the world could end now. It sounded nice, actually, to blip out of existence while I stood in this place that I love. The White Mountains are the place I visualize when I need to throw cold water on a cauldron of anxiety.
Of course, you can’t escape fire. The White Mountains were burning in June. I started obsessively tracking AirNow’s Fire and Smoke Map for new hot spots surrounding the Globe Fire and others nearby. Would the flames reach Wickersham Creek? Burn through the beautiful black spruce forests that sparkle like pink crystal on the coldest days of December? Then the rains returned to Alaska and I became distracted by monster Canadian and California fires. This week, it was our turn.
I try to stay off Twitter (ahem, X) these days. I really do. But two hashtags never fail to draw me in — #cowx and #cofire. After weeks of relative quiet in Colorado, everything blew up at once. Doomscrolling through the feed, it was easy to spiral into the catastrophic thinking that the entire Front Range was about to go up in flames.
First, the weather guys wrote, “Yeah, it’s a lot like 2020. A wet winter followed by months of drought. There’s a lot of fuel dried out, just waiting to burn.” Then the news sites posted about new starts, one after the other. The Alexander Fire erupted on Monday morning west of Loveland. This was followed quickly by the Stone Mountain fire near Lyons. Several friends were evacuated. Overnight Tuesday was the Quarry Fire near our friend Daniel’s house in Littleton. All of these fires spread like, well, wildfire. The sky filled with black smoke. I doomscrolled #cofire and soothed myself with memories of Juneau. Juneau is still a place, I reminded myself, a very rainy place, and probably will be for at least the remainder of my lifetime.
Wednesday morning brought a new source of stress because Beat had an appointment with a surgeon to have a concerning spot in his mouth looked at, at the behest of his dentist. Cancer scares are just another part of the routine awfulness of life in the modern world, but I was anxious and not my best self on Wednesday morning. I wrote a post that probably came across as overly negative, then I got on my indoor bike to smash out a plodding climb of Ven-Top, the longest, most mind-numbing climb on Zwift. I was annoyed with my slowness but my breathing hasn’t cooperated in recent weeks. Even indoors with the HEPA filter, I gasp and wheeze when my heart rate spikes. But it could be worse. Outdoors, I can’t even walk across a parking lot without feeling slightly faint. Such is the routine awfulness of Ozone Alert Days for a person with asthma.
Beat’s doctor appointment was in the late afternoon. Throughout the morning he texted updates about Daniel and his family, who hadn’t been evacuated yet but were readying to go. I returned to doomscrolling the Quarry Fire when I came across a post from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office:
“New fire Lakeshore area, NE corner of Gross Reservoir. Flagstaff Road closed.”
“FUCK” I screamed, out loud even though I was alone at the house. The outburst was so unexpected that I startled myself with the noise. Scroll, scroll, scroll. I need more information, more details. That’s when I received the call from the sheriff’s office. Evacuation warning. “Prepare to evacuate, or take immediate action if you need extra time to mobilize.”
I used to keep go-bags ready throughout the summer but admit I don’t anymore. Go bags are annoying to pack and unpack, and if it’s stuff you don’t need every day, that’s exactly what it is — stuff you don’t need. If it is stuff you need every day, either way, you’re going to have to rush around the house packing — if you’re even given the time.
I was already working my shift for the day when the evacuation call came in. I gave myself 10 minutes to grab what I could — stripped the closet of a few pairs of pants and shirts, underwear, meds, laptops, passport, Beat’s papers, a couple of headlamps, and a few more expensive electronics. Then I sat back down to work but mostly scrolled Watch Duty and Nextdoor and X and whatever else I could find. The fire was spreading. The reports looked bad.
“FUCK” I screamed again, again not planning the outburst. I remembered the fire safe and hoisted the heavy contraption up two flights of stairs. Beat called after he had received the alert. He was walking to the doctor’s office. He wanted me to grab his contacts and glasses, a few more electronics, shoes, and coats. I filled two more duffels and set the pile next to the door. I pondered what else I should grab while I had time. Should I put a couple of bikes in the car? My childhood diaries? The photo albums from my young adulthood? The mementos from my dad? Honestly, I didn’t want to deal with any of it. If we lost the house and had to live out of the cars for a while, I didn’t want to drag this stuff around. It’s a truism I’ve heard before and repeated to myself: “When it comes time to gather your valuables, suddenly not much seems valuable.”
I sat down for a Zoom meeting with my colleagues. I didn’t mention the evacuation warning but the subject of Colorado’s fires came up anyway, as it was one of the top stories on the AP wire that day. “It’s an inferno right now,” I told my colleagues. “I hate it here.”
My colleagues tease me frequently because I work for a newspaper in Alaska and often talk about how I wish I still lived in Alaska. Why don’t I live in Alaska? It’s … complicated? But I do love my home in Colorado. I just struggle with the challenges of an already hot and dry climate accelerating toward an extremely hot and dry future.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Two structures impacted. One lost. The fire is now 6 to 8 acres, per the lead plane overhead. A neighbor posted a picture of a column of black smoke. I didn’t open my window shades or bother to look outside. I didn’t need this to become any more real. I heard distant sirens and helicopters. Beat called again as he was walking back from the doctor’s office. The surgeon had given him an all-clear, or at least a mostly all-clear. Nothing in life is certain. But the outlook was optimistic for now, and that was something.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. An Evacuation Order is being issued for zone BC-57B, per radio traffic. What? That zone is west of the fire … Front Range fires never move west, do they? The wind outside was ripping. The evacuation order covered a huge area, but we were still in the voluntary zone.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Both roads into the neighborhood were closed, and Boulder County Open Space closed many of the trails adjacent to Flagstaff Road. Beat called from a trailhead to the south of those closures.
“They’re not letting me through. No one can come up right now, even residents,” he told me. “What do you think? Should I run home?”
And I admit, I was frightened and wanted Beat to come home. I might need him to help us evacuate. He could decide if the bikes were worth saving. He could make sure I got all of the important papers. My anxiety was rapidly flipping various “off” switches in my brain and shutting the whole thing down. I can’t even remember whether I finished my newspaper work for the day, but apparently I did.
“As long as you can breathe okay, I think it will be okay,” I told Beat. “There hasn’t been much movement from the fire in the last hour.”
So he ran home — from South Boulder up and over Bear Peak, a 3,000-foot climb followed by a steep descent — where he stayed off trail for good measure — toward home. He arrived home just after the evacuation orders had been lifted for all but the immediate area of the fire. Firefighters and air patrols had tamped down the blaze with incredible efficiency before it spread beyond seven acres. Only one home burned even though the blaze was determined to be human-caused during construction work on a nearby property in a relatively dense residential zone. Legends, all of them.
It’s not all cheerful, though. The man who lost his home is a senior who lives alone. He was out of town at the time, thankfully, but his cat went missing during the fire. It’s so sad, but I’m heartened that the neighborhood came together and raised $10,000 for his GoFundMe.
After the all-clear call came through, one of my first thoughts was “Dad’s hiking hat. I’m going to grab that next time.”
It was an intense few hours, a huge burst of adrenaline that was over just as quickly as it started. I don’t expect to get as lucky every time, or perhaps even next time. As it was, I was still doomscrolling at 10:12 p.m. Wednesday when another person announced: “New 1/8 acre fire below the backside of Flagstaff Mountain.”
WTF? I went on Watch Duty and discovered that this fire was real. The suspected cause was fireworks. Flagstaff Road had been closed for hours! How did idiots with fireworks even get up there? WTF??!!
This fire, too, was contained quickly, so I suppose we got lucky at least one more time.
While I’ve been doomscrolling fires and stuck indoors due to poor air quality, these flowers have given me a reason to smile. They were a gift from our friends Joel and Danni, who we visited in Grand Junction after Beat finished the Ouray 100 on July 21. I was confused when I found a bouquet of roses on the nightstand, but then I noticed a card. In the card, Danni and Joel expressed condolences for the loss of my father.
“Sending you love and healing energy,” they wrote. I surprised myself by breaking out in tears as I read their handwritten words. It was so thoughtful. It was so validating. The following day, I thanked Danni for the flowers and then sheepishly admitted that my father died three years ago. I wondered if they believed it to have happened much more recently.
“We know,” Danni responded. “We haven’t seen you since before then.” I wanted to tell her how meaningful it is to receive “love and healing energy” for a wound that most would believe to be much farther along in the healing process but still stings as much as it did in 2021. The flowers meant a lot to me, but all I could say out loud was “Thank you. It’s just so sweet and thoughtful.”
The bouquet had to take a difficult ride home — five hours smashed between the cooler and Beat’s drop bags as temperatures soared into the upper 90s. But they thrived, and 10 days later, they still looked so beautiful. Sure, the more smashed stalks were finally starting to wilt, but they were surprisingly robust. On Thursday afternoon — after Beat and I returned to town to pick up the car and then I went to the gym to take out my frustration on the rowing machine to the point of total exhaustion — I spent more time than I care to admit sitting on the couch and staring at these flowers.
It was a beautiful garden in my mind — lush, colorful, and so far away from the Hellscape still raging outside.
Also, it kept me from doomscrolling.
Love your honestly and rawness and sending hugs. I was thinking of you and Beat when that fire was happening, and I really appreciated your updates. I can relate to this post in so many ways. The fires, living in the smoke with asthma, loss of my dad (and more recently, my mom). And also your concern for your neighbors and just the overall feeling of doom being on the Front Range during summer. I had moved to the mountains in 2019 after my dad passed and I could no longer deal with the heat and smoke with my asthma, but I had recently tried moving back to Boulder County. (Dumb idea for me to try it in the summer.) I was also feeling the doom this past week being in the Boulder area and watching it all unfold. But I had, thankfully, already decided I was heading back to the mountains and just came back up to Dillon on Thursday. Sadly, I didn’t get to connect with many friends while in Boulder this summer, and I hope we can connect again sometime soon. Hang in there. And I hope things improve soon with the heat and fires. For all of us in the west. Hugs.
We are experiencing the same thing here in Bend, OR. Fires all around us in the surrounding national forest and also popping up near town. I have a friend here that has only lived in the mid-west and east coast previously and she is much more concerned about wildfire than I am. Not that I'm NOT concerned, I am--but after living a lifetime in southern and northern California, I've lived through 2 major earthquakes (homes destroyed, freeways collapsing--you get the point), massive wildfires within a few miles of me, floods, landslides, beach cliffs collapsing, etc. Only having to deal with wildfire seems easy compared to what I have experienced my entire life. We also moved from being in a semi-rural, high-risk wildfire area to a more urbanized environment (more of a traditional neighborhood). So, that helps quite a bit compared to where we were living before. Not that that solves everything but living in a rural area, while nice, does increase your exposure and risk. In that case, moving is not a bad solution.