When faced with the unknown

Every year in the West we have wildfires.

Sunday evening view from our backyard, before we evacuated.

Right now there's a large fire pretty close to where I grew up - in the Black Forest.  East and south of Monument and Woodmoor, where I grew up.  Check out the live updates here.  There are lots of houses there and many have already burned.

In June 2011 we evacuated from White Rock to Santa Fe because of the Las Conchas fire.  White Rock was under voluntary evacuation, but glowing embers the size of quarters and a few even larger were landing there the evening that we left.  

I realized something personally when we left that Sunday night.  I packed the 4-Runner with most of our camping gear because we were camping out in our friends garden.  Other than that we had our laptops and external hard drives, and picture albums.  And that is pretty much it.  I realized while taking pictures of all of our things around the house and packing a bit that I really don't need things.  Sure, many things I have are sentimental in some way.  But when faced with the uncertainty of evacuation I knew that the most important things are Danny and Zoe.  If they are safe we can handle adversity together.  And they were safe, they were with me the whole time.

If my things had been lost I would have been upset.  But I had my family and that is all I really need.

Morning ashes in Santa Fe.