It has been many weeks since Mr. Bear last strolled the neighborhood.
Mr. Bear is, well, a bear. I didn’t name him; my neighbor did. Each visit from Mr. Bear followed the same pattern. About an hour after dusk, the neighbor’s dog would start barking. The porch light would come on, and my neighbor would lean over her deck railing shouting, “No! No, Mr. Bear! Go away!” The name stuck in my mind.
Bur anthropomorphizing wildlife is problematic. My mountain community is at the wildland-urban interface, a potential hazard to both existing ecosystems and the humans encroaching upon them. My neighbors are bemused by the ursine incursions each autumn, and the foraging animals pose little immediate threat aside from the occasional ransacking of an unoccupied vacation cabin or car whose flatlander owners foolishly left food inside. But the critters are just one cause for concern.
This region is deceptively picturesque. The legions of tourists who arrive in the wake of every snowfall ski and snowboard with nary a thought of its occasionally brutal natural history. Less than a mile from where I sit, a wagon train of settlers stranded by an especially harsh winter lost more than forty of their number to starvation and exposure nearly 175 years ago. But increasingly it’s been the sparseness of snowfall around these parts that has become troublesome.
I’ve lived up here about twenty years. The first ten winters were fairly predictable. We would get moderate snowfall from late October through late December, with a week or two to recover between storms. As one might expect, January and February brought more frequent weather systems and heavier snowfall. March and April would see a tapering off, though snow in May wasn’t unheard of. We had to cancel final exams and postpone commencement at the end of one spring semester because a storm had made the roads impassable.
What constitutes a normal winter now is hard to describe. The snowfalls of 2017-2019 were normal; every other year since 2011 has seen drought conditions. Last winter was comparatively dry, and yet we had light snowfall the first week of June (the Sunday before summer session began). Even the summers have brought atypical weather, with windstorms, lightning, and the occasional heavy downpour.
And then there is fire season, which promises to become a year-round thing with the unusual number of dry winters we’ve had. Even the good winters of late brought ample rainfall at the lower elevations, which in turn provided fuel in the form of vegetation growth. The 2017 Napa Valley fire and the horrific 2018 Camp Fire are the shape of things to come. Some of my neighbors’ insurers agree and have refused to renew their home insurance policies.
My town and the surrounding area haven’t experienced a large-scale wildfire in nearly a century. We’re about due; it’s a matter of time. The community’s prepared, at least according to plan.
But plans seldom come off in an actual emergency. If a wildfire of the scale and speed of that which ravaged Paradise struck my town, we would see a similar outcome. My homeowner’s association has put together an evacuation plan in conjunction with the local authorities, which is undoubtedly doomed to failure if put to the test.
I know this from an incident a couple of years ago. I was going out of town, and I intended to leave early ahead of a major snowstorm. So did the hordes of flatlanders who had come up for the weekend without consulting the weather forecast. I live on a side street just off the main drag, which in turn connects to the interstate. As I loaded my luggage into my car, I noticed a very unusual sight for my lightly trafficked lane.
It was a long line of stationary cars. Walking to the end of the driveway, I saw that the traffic jam extended up the street for as far as I could see. The highway patrol was metering westbound traffic entering the freeway. The airport I was departing from was 40 miles in the opposite direction everyone else was going, so if I could just make to the main street I’d have it made. Not having a choice, I got into the car and joined the line.
A half hour later, we had moved less than a hundred feet. As the wait dragged on, I eventually lost patience. I’m usually a cautious driver, but cautious wasn’t going to cut it in this situation. I turned out of the idle line of cars and raced down the shoulder to the intersection. As soon as I saw a momentary gap in the crosstraffic, I jackrabbited a quick left turn and was finally on my way.
I later read that many of the out of towners spent that night in their cars, which brings me back to my hypothetical wildfire. After what I saw during that winter storm, I’m skeptical that the authorities could successfully evacuate the town ahead of a fast-moving firestorm. The egress routes are too few. I foresee a repeat performance of the Camp Fire: Some will get away by car, others will flee on foot, and others will be fatally trapped.
The prospect of disaster is not enough to motivate me to leave, though. No place on earth is free of risk. Climate change is making the magnitude of many of these hazards worse, however. Our inaction on this crisis stems from the seemingly piecemeal, scattered nature of its attendant disasters. A Florida hurricane causing many millions of dollars in damage is unfortunate, but I don’t experience its effects here on the West Coast any more than drought and wildfire here affect Floridians. It’s hard to tie such geographically localized phenomena to a single cause, even to those of us who are not denialists. Barring a sudden, single, widespread catastrophe, we are unlikely to see a concerted effort in this country to address the climate predicament in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, I wait at home on the edge of the wild warily watching a changing world.
©
2021 The Unassuming Scholar
