Finding My Way to the Fire

The universe has a strange way of providing for us. I had been unemployed for less than 24 hours when I received an unsolicited call from a former employer.
“Hello?”
“Fire in California- they desperately need a good equipment dispatcher. Are you available to go?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
I used to work Fire and Aviation for the US Forest Service. I’d given it up last year. Now here they are offering me a lot of money for some temporary work. Even though I had a lot of good plans coming up over the next few weeks, it was too good a deal to turn down. So here I am, hurdling through southern CA on my way to a dispatch center for the Angles National Forest.
The smoke in the air makes it look like we are driving into a massive thunderstorm. The kind the rolls in out west, filling the sky with volumous* dark clouds that seem to scrape the tops of the hills. In a way this is correct. When fires get big enough they begin creating their own weather. Alternatively, from other angles it looks like it is sunset- an eerie effect given that it is 2 o’clock in the afternoon. As we take a turn in the freeway I can see the actual fire in the hazy distance along the ridgetops, and even from that far away the flames are running high enough to be seen by the naked eye. When we finally get to a point where I can see the sun it is glowing Mars red. I think to myself
This must be what Pompeii looked like.


* I know volumous is not technically a proper word, but I think it should be. I stand by the assertion that it means something different than “voluminous” which suggests an ethereal or fluffy quality. Volumous carries the suggestion of expansive with weight. There is substance there.