"Thunder and Lightning"

"I didn't sign up for this when I moved here, "
"But didn't you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm pretty sure you did sign up for this."
"Ok, I have no idea what you mean."
"Well, isn't that what Kevin does? He moved out there to fight fires."
   
After several very stressful days, due to the wildfires, this was the belly laugh I needed. My brother, who had been here to visit me, who texts with me nearly every day, had thought my partner had moved out here to fight forest fires.
I couldn't contain my laughter, and with the phone jiggling in my hand, and tears from my giggles now falling down my cheeks, I inquired further.

"WHAT are you talking about? Kevin doesn't fight fires."

My brother was now laughing too, "Doesn't he? I thought he was the guy that lit the charges, to create foxholes, to stop the fire from progressing." The hilarity continued, that's not how wildfires are controlled. There is no soldier in a trench, setting off dynamite to create a massive crater. My brother had been telling people for months now, that's what Kevin does.

This was very typical of my family. My father and my brother, in particular, have a wonderful ability to not only stretch and twist memories of past events but to sometimes create complete alternate realities and pass them on as truth.
Kevin and I had been living in another province for nearly a year and my brother had this detailed idea of what Kevin had been doing for work on a daily basis.

"No, no he doesn't fight fires. He works for a logging company. He is a silviculturist. He mainly works alone and drives to certain areas and checks in on the forests and trees and stuff."

We had a fire burning very close to us, and I had had no reprieve in days the edginess and sickness in my belly. We were on evacuation alert. The car was packed. I was ready to go. I was just waiting for the order. Leave it to my brother in all of his imaginative brilliance to allow me some emotional release. It was the best phone call I'd had in weeks.

Friday, July 8th
I drove home from work and saw faint billows of gray smoke.

My stomach did drop a little, even a small forest fire is not good. Crews worked quickly and by Sunday morning there was no smoke at all to be seen from the top of my drive. I felt good. Relieved.

Sunday, July 10th
The wind picked up as I took an afternoon nap. I awoke to see this in my backyard.

I started packing the car immediately, as it had grown to an amazing size. I was awestruck, worried and quite frankly really out of my element (no pun intended). I dealt with typhoons in Okinawa, electrical storms, ice storms and blizzards in southern Ontario, but this natural phenomenon was something I had no experience with. That afternoon it wasn't showing any signs of slowing down, as the wind was wickedly strong.

I received a couple phone calls from my country neighbours, telling me to be ready. If the wind shifted, we were all in a lot of trouble.
The fire continued to blaze at that intensity for a few days, luckily there was no shift in the air flow. They had 4 water bombers dumping water consistently.

Even a couple weeks later, hot spots were still flaring up during the day.

As of  July 24th, we were finally taken off of the evacuation alert. We did not have to leave during that time.

I learned a lot about myself, and am still processing the ordeal. It doesn't need to be explicitly explained how fortunate Kevin and I were.

A side effect of having dealt with this situation is that I no longer feel the same about thunder and lightning. My love of electrical storms has died. In the city, lightning strikes are not as capable of inciting the same amount of damage that they do in the bush, for they mainly hit pavement and concrete structures. We can sit on our porches and back decks, a cold beer in hand, giddy with excitement at the skies above us, as we try to snap photos of the snake lightning with our phones.

Here, lightning is a much more dangerous menace. The fire above was started by lightning.

So now I dread seeing those black skies rolling in, whereas before I'd be reveling at the power and beauty of the weather.

I hope I can find a balance again.

All is well on our homestead.

I would like to thank Sarah for her multitude of text messages those days, she kept me calm and helped provide me with a much-needed distraction.

Now for a musical sign-off. One of my all-time favourite songs by We Were Promised Jetpacks, fittingly called "Thunder and Lightning"