Hot, Humid and Pyrocloudy!

I got home tonight, just before the sun set, with the hope of catching its uncharacteristic redness as it hung for the last moments in a web of ash haze. But just as I grabbed my cell phone camera, it was gone. Los Angeles. The City. And the fires are all around us.

I think this is the worse fire season I can remember. As someone who lives in the flatlands near the groovy Grove, I am not in any danger. At least I don't think I am, unless an earthquake hits, a passing concern I did have today given the heat and the Blade Runner like feel of the day. Still, aside from knowing people whose homes are in the endangered areas, and watching the around the clock coverage on the local news, the ubiquity of the Station Fire and the others of less well known nomenclature, was pronounced even for me. The sickly sweet smell of smoke has greeted every morning. Today, when I opened my car door ash flew around me. On Saturday, I saw this beautiful mushroom like cloud that I have come to know as pyrocumulus rising with agitation from behind every hill that surrounds us.

This beautiful Los Angeles landscape so readily transformed into a kind of overhanging day darkness and a pervasive sense, at least to me, of doom. Apocalyptic, comes to mind. Today I could not help but remember a rather dire bibilical promise from You Know Who involving the end of the world. But, no. Not yet, I thought. Ok, Lord, really, not now. I was distracted from the idea of earthly cataclysm by the high school students practicing in full regalia on a field and wondering whose brilliant idea was it to have kids exercising with particulate matter all around them. Was it my imagination or were the drivers particularly bad today? Californians apparently cannot drive in rain, or ash. All right, it wasn't that bad, the ash, not the driving. Me, the woman who loves summer found myself wishing for a coolish fall day to give reprieve.

They say that by the end of the week or early next week, the firefighters, those brilliant brave souls, will have a handle on it, having lost two of their own to save houses and lives, in the middle of brush where houses probably were never meant to be.

Tonight, I give them my thoughts and prayers, and thanks. And hope that tomorrow will be a safer California day.