Colors of the Season

Here in Santa Rosa, that would be fire season. This beautiful leaf on the pavement caught  my eye because it is the color of flame and the color of ash two things we have had in abundance this month. I'm sure the time will come when everything I see doesn't remind me of fire, but it hasn't quite gotten here yet....

The tentacles of black, grey, russet and brown reach over ridge lines, down the sides of mountains and through neighborhoods. The helicopters continue to make reconnaissance flights over the hills. People dressed in hazmat suits pick through the rubble of subdivisions.  The city and county governments struggle with unanswerable questions. Our friends, whose house burned to the ground along with the rest of their neighborhood, try to figure out how to start over when they have nothing left. 

Peter went back to the high school on Friday where the teachers try to figure out how to cram two and a half lost weeks into what remains of the semester, while many of his classmates who lost their homes try to remember what a 'normal' routine was like. Dana went back to the middle school where the fire was stopped across the street and here aren't enough service dogs to comfort the kids. 

For most, it is a period of limbo, where the there are a myriad questions without immediately obvious answers. There will be a lot of creative people working on thinking outside the box, and the  solutions will determine what kind of town this will become....

Peter showed up to work on his college essays with a Puma (high school mascot) Strong  tee shirt. Sonoma Strong and Santa Rosa Strong and dozens of variations on the theme are beginning to appear next to the signs thanking the first responders. We will all need to stay that way as this story continues to unfold even as the rest of the world moves on to the next thing....