In the Pines: Smoke & luck

Last time we checked in with our story of 2017, my family was trying to drive through the pass on Highway 126/20 after watching the solar eclipse, and move into the home we'd bought. Best laid plans of mice and men, as the saying goes.

Our new neighborhood west of Sisters had been evacuated so we headed to the Valley for a week or so. Coming back to Sisters proved impossible. In addition to the roaring, smoking Milli Fire very close to Sisters itself, we were stopped at the ODOT station by smaller ignitions.

Once again we had to turn our little RPod trailer around. Our son might miss the first day of first grade at Sisters Elementary, an idea that bothered me a lot for some reason. Maybe it was a distraction from the bigger issue: What if our house burns down before we can even move in? And will our friends at ODOT be safe?

We headed back downhill and stayed at Holiday Farm RV park again, unsure of what would happen next (but knowing they had a trickle of Internet access). We'd been living as free-floating "full-timers" in the RPod all summer; what was a bit more camping?

Photo by T. Lee Brown

The green dino on Cascade Avenue sported eclipse glasses and a smoke-filtering mask on one of those rare, clear days during the Milli Fire.

Next morning, we saw that Highway 20 and the pass had been reopened. The evacuation order on Crossroads had been lifted. Well OK then! We drove through the wild haze toward Sisters. The buildings at the ODOT station looked fine. I dropped my husband off for work in town and navigated the RPod through the old school's parking lot.

Our son missed half the school day, but we got to meet his new teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Fiedler. The schools had announced that they'd installed special air filters and it was safe to return in spite of Milli. Well, there had also been construction performed on the old elementary school that summer, and they just plain hadn't finished.

The classroom reeked of smoke. I noticed a 2–3" space at the bottom of the door that led outside. Nobody had replaced the weather stripping. With Mrs. Fiedler's blessing, I proceeded to MacGyver a makeshift one using scissors, tag board, and masking tape.

Keep in mind that this was in the Before Times... not just pre-pandemic, but pre-lots-of-wildfires era. There were big fires in this area in 2003. When Milli burned so much of the national forest west of town 14 years later, folks were not accustomed to regular influxes of heavy, unhealthy smoke like we are now. It was still unusual. Frightening. Strange.

Friends and relatives in Bend reported that they were wearing N95 masks and staying indoors, because wildfire smoke can cause respiratory damage and other health problems. As I drove the RPod on Highway 242 heading west toward our new house, through Sisters, I was surprised to see a mom with her jogging stroller, running through smoke with her infant. Even the cross-country team was out running.

Why was I driving straight into a grey wall of smoke? It seemed completely insane to drive west, drive toward certain doom instead of away from it. I started laughing (as one does). Yes, it was nuts, and yes, I was going to do it anyway.

The highway was closed off right at the road leading to Crossroads. Fire and safety personnel were about, and one of those LED signs. I turned into Crossroads and finally pulled the RPod up to our house. Our new home.

I walked out into Milli's roiling grey miasma and stepped into a nice house full of clean, filtered air. It's a well built house, buttoned up nicely. Transitioning from living on the road to living in a house is disorienting in normal, non-fiery circumstances; this was downright weird! We were so very fortunate. I was aware of that.

Our son made it to school. We were able to live in a lovely house that hadn't burned down and was no longer under evacuation orders. Yes, Milli kept on burning for weeks, but we were lucky. We even had a big stock of BlueAir filters and N95 masks, items I had to use for years due to allergies. Some days we had to stay indoors, particularly some family members with health and respiratory problems.

Other days we'd get a magical clearing. The skies would open to heaven, bright and blue. One of those days we hosted a couple dozen friends in the backyard for our son's birthday; we brought out the cider press from my childhood and the kids squeezed those apples into a delicious elixir.

During the After Times, the now, the climate-change-is-real-and-it's-here times, I think back to the relatively innocent days of 2017. What was it like to imagine that immense forest fires would only happen every decade or so? What was it like to live without smoke-or fear thereof-most of the year?

Sometimes I can't quite remember. I do remember we are lucky. Alive. Blessed.