Hello, my name is Dan and I am guilty of encroaching on fire country. I might not be as guilty as some folk, but I am guilty just the same. My wife and I bought our house in 1997. It was part of a new development, just carved out of grasslands at the foot of the Diablo Range. We commonly encounter bands of wild turkeys, coyotes, various species of snakes, feral pigs, and occasionally we can see or hear cattle or tule elk on the nearby hills. This is tangible evidence that we are encroachers. Settler-Colonizers. Our own little West Bank on the Prairie.
Part of the reason we chose this place was that it was relatively affordable, though I’m sure we made up the difference in the personal cost and atmospheric degradation of decades of commuting.
The encroachment continues, and every time another patch of grassland is graded nearby, scores of migrants — voles and field mice — wander onto our little lot. I trapped 80 mice last July (relocated 79 of them).
Back in June 2021, our neighborhood was threatened by a grassfire. We live in a natural wind corridor. There’s a cell tower on the hill at the end of our street, and there are high-tension power lines on the hills just above our settlement. We were told that the fire was ignited when mylar balloons struck a power line.
We had been threatened by fires before. One was ignited by sparks thrown by the car of some kids joy-riding in the hills. We’ve been threatened by a couple fires with unknown causes, and there were several more caused by a semi-homeless man back in 2017. I’m no nimby, and I don’t like to vilify the homeless or addicts but I’m scared to death of fire, so I bore down on that troubled gentleman and on his parents as well. I even raided his meth stash. He vanished. I wish him well but I hope he never returns.
Hey, I can hardly talk. I started a couple fires as a kid, one of which could have destroyed my home. I was curious. I didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t understand fire.
One thing I learned as a boy was that dry grass ignites easily and burns quickly, so we are going to have our fires. Fortunately, our hills are not blessed with much forest or chaparral, so they do not burn very hot. Someday I might have to eat those words. The danger is real.
Whodunnit? We all want to know who or what started a fire. It’s a fair question. Ignition must of course be avoided, but around here ignition is going to happen, sooner or later. We tempt fate by building in fire country. For that we only have ourselves to blame.
I forgot to mention one grassfire that occurred twenty years or so back, on our daughter's birthday. She spotted it first. She'd looked up through our sliding-glass door and asked, "why is that cloud red?" I replied quite anxiously, "That's no cloud." Upon recalling that moment, I am reminded that she spotted a structure fire next to a neighbor's house this last July. As packed as our homes are together, that's a potential disaster.