I’ve been thinking of California these past weeks. My dad’s daily worried texts have stopped, but I still feel for all the families who’ve been displaced, during a pandemic. I feel for everyone who is struggling to breathe during this time, who is homeless, who is afraid for their home or possessions, who is missing a loved one, and so on. It seems unfair to have yet another devastating fire, especially so early in the season. Surely, the Earth could spare us this year.

When I was 9, my family was on the way back from a cross-country trip. We left Reno and were winding our way down the Sierras when we came through a forest fire. This was before cell phones were widespread. My mom was nervous about driving through the fire, but we were waved on. The highway was closed shortly after we drove through.

Two memories stand out. The first is the dead logs ten, twenty-five feet off the highway. Red flames like a campfire rose up from them. I saw one catch on fire. It seemed too close. I still don’t know why they let us through. We weren’t the last car, either.

The second is the cloud of smoke behind us. I looked back and one of the mountain passes we’d just come through had a cloud of smoke covering it and above it. It’s difficult to describe. I can still picture it all these years later, though.

It’s from those moments that, six years later, I added them to the plot I was developing for my novels.