FIRE!

Adrenaline is a sickening thing. I know because it rushed through me when black smoke filled the sky over our mobile home park. I paced nervously as the smoke billowed over the nearby hill. I walked across the road to talk to neighbors lining the roadway to watch the sky above the hill; I strode from front driveway to back; I called Cindy in Angels Camp; I called Andrea to tell her I wouldn't be meeting her down town. I went in the house to get a bottle of water; I came back out. I called Cindy again. She was coming home. I went inside for the camera. I walked across the street again. Then I headed back to the house as airplanes and helicopters roared across the sky. The smoke turned from black to orangish-red to white and then black again. I called Michael to see if he was in Greenhorn Creek. My eyes never left the direction in which the fire was burning. I took a chair to the back driveway where I could sit and watch. When Cindy came home, she grabbed a chair and joined me. She had seen the flames from the road as she drove down Rawhide. More airplanes. The guys in the park fired up the tractor and moved it close to the bottom of the hill in the event that the fire moved more directly this way. Suddenly I was ill with nausea. Too much adrenaline! (News about the fire is reported here.)