Bicycle

As we get back into our routines, we find ourselves driving through more and more 'fire zones'. This bicycle brought back a memory of my friend Kim whose house burned down in the East Bay Hills fire. She was an artist and a free thinker and she and her husband decided to design and build a new home at the site of the one which was destroyed. 

It was quite a saga. She designed a house of glass and stone with a Mediterranean garden with a fountain and a stream which went through the house and out to the infinity edge pool which overlooked a stunning view of the San Francisco Bay. The garden also featured a huge stone which had to be trucked to the site and lifted OVER the glass house and into the garden with a huge crane. 

They had a party when the house was finished, and Kim's burned bicycle, like a piece of sculpture, was hanging on the wall in the living room.

It is bad enough to see block after block of blackened rubble, burned trees and twisted and melted metal, but seeing something like this burned bicycle, looking like a painting by Salvador Dali, seems particularly poignant. One can't help but speculate about who rode it. It bestows a personal note of loss upon an otherwise otherworldly scene.

I can't help wonder about the people who lived in these vast burned areas and whose houses were spared. In some ways, they must almost wish their house had burned along with all its neighbors. The alternative of  living in a war zone, soon to be a construction zone, is unimaginable. I can hardly bear to drive through there.

There is activity in all these sites already. People from the EPA in hazmat suits are sifting through the rubble and removing all the toxic substances that people store in their houses...cleaning products, old paint, and a warehouse full of propane tanks...the kind that come with barbecues. A local auto wrecker has promised to remove every burned out vehicle, haul them away on  flatbed trucks to be crushed and ship what's left to China. He is doing this at no charge to the owners. There are estimated to be 9,000 such vehicles in Sonoma County alone. 

This county is full of amazing people....