Wildfire: Days Five–Six

And scared is when a bear is most dangerous. Like Dad said, usually a bear will run away rather than confront a human. But if it doesn’t, things can get ugly quick.

I cast a wary eye for water snakes, but they like muddy bottoms and weeds and this is clear and sandy.

I take off my shoes, dry them on the grass, and put them back on. Soggy, but tolerable.

MARVEL LAKE SURVIVAL SKILLS CAMP
BUILDING STRENGTH, CHARACTER & ENDURANCE

It’s really great we found the camp, which means shelter and water and probably food, even if it is nuts and berries, but there’s a tinge of smoke in the air, and we can’t be that many miles from the spreading lightning fire, or for that matter from the main fire line behind it.

A wooden desk and a big swivel chair, several filing cabinets, and knotty pine walls plastered with photographs of kids on survival trips. White-water rafting, canoe portaging, rock climbing with helmets and harnesses and complicated-looking ropes.

I slump into the swivel chair, exasperated.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few days, it’s that you always find a way. You go, I’ll pack up whatever supplies I can scrounge, and when you get back here—zoom, we’re gone!”

I get out and explore on foot. No problem navigating around the trees or avoiding the boulders strewn through this part of the forest.

Delphy’s cabin is called “Fortitude.” Mine is called “Endurance.”

First thing tomorrow, we get the Jeep down the incline, load it up, and head back to civilization.

Every so often the bikes will pause, going to idle, and we hear the noise of something breaking, and their chant: “FROM AWAY, STAY AWAY! FROM AWAY, STAY AWAY!”

Black smoke billows out.

But we finally make it to the ledge, clamber over it, and begin to climb the slope up into the woods.

The biker bros have found the planks we propped on the ledge, and they zoom across, side by side. Working their way up the slope as fast as they can, skidding around trees and flying high over rocks and protruding roots.

A cloud of dense black smoke roils behind us like a breaking wave.

Then I hear it, too. The banshee scream of dirt bikes at maximum velocity.

He’s more intent than ever on trying to force us to crash.

He comes up one side of us, standing on his pegs, and then veers away and comes up the other side, gunning his throttle.

I try to imagine a fully loaded lumber truck trundling along in these ruts, and it reminds me how dangerous it can be, driving a big rig.

Keep to the ruts. Do not deviate. Concentrate on the task at hand, and the road will take care of itself. What my father called his “three mantras,” things he kept in mind that helped him drive safely, back when he was hauling pulpwood.

Keep to the ruts. Do not deviate. Concentrate on the task at hand, and the road will take care of itself. What my father called his “three mantras,” things he kept in mind that helped him drive safely, back when he was hauling pulpwood.

Delphy nods vigorously, but doesn’t say a word.

That’s how we do it, all the way down the slope, me steering like a maniac with my hands welded to the wheel, Delphy shouting out which way to turn.

We tear around the building and sure enough, there’s an old, pothole- riddled road just wide enough for the Jeep.

We're just starting down the bumpy access road when the fire sweeps up over the hillside, igniting the meadow and the underbrush and the stand of scrawny pines all at once. More an explosion than a fire. Like the world was doused in gasoline, and God was holding the match.

A wave of scalding heat makes it hard to breathe.

That day it ran cool and smooth, and somehow it kept accelerating—okay, that was me, standing on the pedal as we headed downhill—and we flew down that road something beautiful, catching up with the flames and passing them, blowing through clouds of hot black smoke and emerging unscathed.

I remember a couple of cottages flashing by and knew we were close to a lake, but I couldn’t see it through the seething clouds of hot black smoke.

A long dock that was as good as a road, wide enough for the Jeep, and we tore down that dock at full speed, racing like no tomorrow as the fire swept around the lake, turning everything to flame, incinerating an entire evacuated village.