The days feel ethereal— intangible. I wake to aquatic blue skies, move through my typical morning routine: tend to the dogs, make a cup of coffee, read the local news. It’s the fire news that flips my world. Below our home at 2,800’ we have another home near Northeast Oroville within the mandatory evacuation zone of the 3,700-acre Thompson Fire. The house is in escrow, due to close in twelve days. For a month, my husband, Lloyd, and I have traveled to the lower foothills to water the shrubs and flowers, open the sliding doors to freshen the air inside the house, but we can no longer enter the neighborhood. Roads are closed. Temperatures have soared to over 100 degrees. Thick smoke smothers the area. We wait for news of positive change, but it doesn’t come. I worry. What if the house burns while we’re in escrow? What if the buyer changes her mind? We’d still have to pay the mortgage and the two separate insurance policies.
The fire began on July 2nd. My friend, Darlene, sent me a text; “Looks like there’s a fire outside of Oroville near your house. Are you guys okay?”
We were physically okay, as we were no longer living in the house on three-acres in Oroville. Thankfully, all of our belongings were now in our mountain home. At first, the fire was a mere 15 acres, and we believed the house would be spared, but by early afternoon, the growing flames led to expanding evacuation orders that included our neighborhood zone. By the morning of June 3rd, the fire had increased to over 3,000 acres with no containment. Twenty-eight thousand people had evacuated, and 12,000 structures were at risk of burning. Our house was included in that number.
Back in 2023, Lloyd and I had put our alpine-style mountain cabin with its wide front porch, tall metal roof and a loft for sale due to the hardships of living in big snows. We bought the Oroville house, thinking it would be the best option to make life a bit easier—no shoveling snow, no fire evacuations, a closer drive to town. We had rented out the mountain house, as buyers weren’t purchasing homes there. In fact, we were losing populations. Fires, heavy snow, atmospheric river rains and the increased insurance rates were probable causes. Whatever the reasons, populations had dropped, and home sales fell.
It took less than a year of living in Oroville for Lloyd and me to discover we didn’t like living close to the city. I hated the hot weather, hated the constant peripheral noice—sirens, motorcycles, hospital helicopters; so, when the renters moved out of our mountain home in May of 2024, we moved our furniture there and settled in. We listed our Oroville home, and it sold immediately.
I was thankful we were safe and cool; thankful that we didn’t have to evacuate, and thankful that our belongings were no longer in the Oroville house in the evacuation zone. But memories stirred, and stress and anxiety surged caused by past evacuations we’d made — the 1,311-acre Willow Fire near our off-grid trailer in 2020, the two times we had evacuated for the 963,309-acre Dixie Fire in 2021, and my family’s loss of homes and all they owned during the Paradise Camp Fire in 2018. Photos of flames and thick, dark smoke of the Thompson Fire that spread across the news each morning ignited my PTSD.
I may not have been physically affected by the Thompson Fire, but emotionally, I stood under dark skies filled with billowing smoke and scattering ash. I saw blazing, red-orange flames illuminate the night skies. I felt its searing heat, heard its roar as the inferno devoured everything in its path. I mourned the continuous loss of landscapes, as hope slipped through my fingers like water.
On July 7th, when the Thompson Fire was 48% contained, evacuation orders were lifted in our zone, and roads opened. The fire continued to burn on the far northeastern side, but near our house, fire crews were mopping up. The plants at the house desperately needed water, so I left our mountain home at 6:30 a.m. as I couldn’t tolerate heat, and the temperature was predicted to rise to 118 degrees in Oroville.
The morning was beautiful. Sharp, crisp blue skies contrasted against the shaded silhouettes of pines and Madrone. Occasional wisps of sunlight slipped through the thick forest. I drove towards the foothills, where a view of Oroville Lake could be seen at the bottom of steep canyons. The lake sparkled, but the hills surrounding the lake were drab and barren—the results of the Dixie Fire that ravaged the area three years ago. As I dropped down into the valley, haze and smoke concealed the blue skies, and blackened hills emerged. There wasn’t much traffic on the road early on a Sunday morning, but several bright red fire trucks drove east, most likely to continue the mop up.
It was already hot by the time I made it to the house. The morning freshness found in the mountains was absent there. Perspiration dripped from my forehead and my eyes burned, as I watered the dry, thirsty shrubs and bushes, pruned dried brown roses, branches, and leaves. The green lawn was now gold, but it was mowed short and looked tidy. When the hand-watering was done, I sat in one of the greying-wood Adirondack chairs on the deck waiting for the drip line to time out. The view from our deck showed the hillside of Table Mountain where the famous monogram, the large letter O, had looked over the valley since 1929. I could no longer see the letter—only scorched, blackened hills.
The changes in the landscape seen from our property, were small, yet I knew that not far up the road, twenty-five structures had been destroyed. I felt grateful that our house still stood, undamaged; yet, sad for those who’d lost homes. I tried to be thankful for our good fortune, but my heart circled back to grief. The story of heat and fire was larger than me. I tried to find optimism but couldn’t shake my fear of future fires. Summer was just beginning, and we were looking at months of dangerous fire weather ahead.
I finished my errands by 10:00 a.m. then drove east towards higher elevations. As the air cooled and the scenery turned green, I felt a bit of relief. The skies were bright blue, the trees stood tall, their foliage displaying brilliant greens. I needed this therapeutic boost from the wooded forest, the sweet, piney air, the clear skies above, and the silvery lake below. I held on, imprinting the scenery deep into my consciousness where no fire could burn it to ash.
Kandi Maxwell is a creative nonfiction writer who lives in Northern California. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, Bluebird Word, The Raven’s Perch, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Snow After Fire, was released in June 2023 by Legacy Book Press. Learn more about Kandi’s writing at kandimaxwell.com.
