The Prayer Flag Tree

We went for a walk around our usual circuit in the neighborhood and found similar scenes of utter destruction interspersed with properties which looked almost normal. Like our own property, the larger path of the fire can be traced by the patchwork of burned trees and houses interspersed with some that are untouched.

It is pretty hard to find a picture of something beautiful, but this tree that grew in our field has a certain grim beauty. I hung Christmas ornaments and prayer flags from its branches and admired its twisted limbs and spreading shape. It doesn’t show in this picture but it has been completely uprooted. Nothing remains of its connection with the earth save a large ash lined hole in the ground. The tree which I tried to paint and photographed often lies in the ground, its backdrop of rolling hills black and bare.

Almost every house on Wildwood Mountain burned down. The field at the end of our road has been turned into a staging area for PG&E trucks, earth moving equipment and truckloads of wooden telephone poles. There is even a helicopter landing pad in the place where the little red barn used to be. Our Sunday morning was punctuated by the sound of big trucks rumbling down Wildwood Trail at the bottom of our driveway and up Los Alamos Road at the top of our field.

We are all without internet or telephone services. My phone is doing yeoman’s service as a poor substitute. I’m writing my blip on it so I can’t make a collage or put photos in extras. The one function my phone can’t do very well is be a telephone!

It is going to be an interesting existence as we transition from peaceful rural road to noisy construction site.

One day at a time we are trying to live in the moment....