Apocalypse: We've All Been There

As I write this, there are fires burning throughout Southern California. In itself, this is not unusual for this time of year; we always get wildfires when the Santa Ana winds blow. This is the first year, however, that we've had them burning right in our town. Friends and family are being evacuated from their homes, and we have evacuee houseguests. The early morning was clear and crisp, but even when the sky was bright blue the air smelled of smoke, and by mid-day the sky was all covered with thick swirls of dirty brown smoke. When the fires restrict themselves to the brush on the other side of the hills, the smoke is white and clean, but when houses begin to burn the smoke turns dull and filthy. What sunlight managed to filter through the smokescreen was red-orange, making the entire scene lurid and eerie, like something out of an apocalyptic cartoon. By mid-afternoon it was dark enough to need the lights on in the house, and the air was littered with falling ash and soot. Now it's night, and the sky to the north is glowing red. From the roof of the house we saw the flames flaring up into the sky, and the rising moon turned orange from their reflection. Although the situation is hardly this bad, it feels a bit like we're in a war zone, with lines of cars along the roads as people flee the fires and fire trucks and ambulances racing to and fro. This experience may be broadening, but it's not at all comfortable.