Reflection of another kind

A shot taken yesterday in the Lassen National Forest along Highway 44.

Returning home yesterday, we traversed the upper half of California, some of which sports burn scars from various wildfires. With less than two hours to go, we ran into smoky skies, the Six Rivers Lightning Complex burning without containment. During part of the drive, as blue skies hung over the distant western mountains, a hillside across from us sported flames, separated by what was probably the Trinity River. Plumes of smoke rose from spots along that mountain ledge, and I wonder when we next head east how much of the landscape will resemble the photo above, taken in the Lassen National Forest, an area altered forever.

I don't think I could write a novel about such devastation, leaving that for others to ponder. But it was otherworldly to drive for miles and miles amid what the 2018 Carr Fire had wrought, the fire last summer in Lassen, the August Complex fire from 2020, and then speeding through an ongoing blaze. Once clear of the smoke, nearly twenty first responder vehicles raced past us, heading to areas currently under extreme threat. Only a little smoke had traveled west, our skies mostly clear. Right now we're under a heavy layer of marine cloud, but I wonder once that lifts for the day, will smoke be more prevalent; we saw a good deal of it in 2020, no place in Northern California was spared.

While I am so grateful to be home, being home is a relative term for thousands affected by wildfires and flooding here in America. Elsewhere war and political divisions across the globe have uprooted countless people, with no end in sight to those crises. I touched on that subject in my latest book, but from a distance. And I'm thankful to be a very safe distance from those fires again engulfing my home state, praying for all those involved.