Smelling for smoke

March 6, 2017, had an ominous feel about it. The day was unusually warm for March and by 11 o’clock, the wind was howling out of the southwest, gusting to 50 mph. Everyone living on a ranch in the Texas Panhandle was aware that, for three days, the National Weather Service had issued red flag warnings for this day: extreme danger of wildfires.

Around 2:30 that afternoon, a power line on a ranch 5 miles west of us broke in the high wind and started a fire in the tall prairie grass. A friend in the oil field called to alert me. I walked out the back door of our house, saw the smoke, and knew it was going to be a bad one. It was heading northeast, away from us, but I worried about other fires that might be starting to the south and southwest, upwind.

We lived in a canyon with only one way out. If the road was blocked by fire, we’d be trapped. I told my wife, Kris, to grab a few things, we needed to leave, fast. We left the house with our laptops, Kris’s mandolin, and the clothes we were wearing.

Around 6 o’clock, the wind shifted to the northwest. The fire roared back to life and entered the canyon where we lived. It burned 90 percent of our pastures and destroyed my writing office, a guesthouse, and our home and everything in it. That fire, called the Perryton fire, burned 318,000 acres and is listed as the third biggest wildfire in Texas history. It was only one of many fires that day in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado that burned more than a million acres. In our area, four people were trapped in the flames and died.

Fortunately, Kris and I spent the night in town. If we had returned to the ranch, I might not be writing this.

The fire left us with 9 square miles of blackened desert, and we had to move our cattle to another ranch. We spent the next several months living in town, trying to replace all the things we never thought we would have to replace, right down to underwear, a can opener, and fingernail clippers. In July we moved into a small double-wide modular home at the ranch, and Kris began working on house plans to replace the home we had enjoyed for 25 years.

Rains came in April and continued throughout the summer. Our grass prospered and grew tall. Then in October, the rains stopped and drought conditions returned. We had an extremely dry winter and with each passing day, the fire danger increased.

Would we be observing the one-year anniversary of the fire with another fire that might destroy everything we had replaced and rebuilt since that day?

Two weeks ago, on Friday March 2, almost a year after the fire, I went to my writing office at the usual time and checked the weather report on my computer. The National Weather Service had issued a red flag fire watch for Sunday, March 4, for the entire Texas Panhandle. On Saturday, they upgraded the watch to a warning: high temperatures (75), high winds (35-40 mph with higher gusts), and low humidity. A map on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website showed the “critical” area stretching all the way from El Paso, Texas, up into Colorado and Nebraska.

This forecast was a creepy echo of the fire warnings we’d gotten three days before the 2017 fire, and it came almost a year to the day after that event. Would we be observing the one-year anniversary of the fire with another fire that might destroy everything we had replaced and rebuilt since that day?

It seemed almost too cruel to imagine. Construction workers had just finished building a nice cedar porch on the front of our double-wide.

The wind blew hard Friday and Saturday, and we were on high alert. A few fires broke out around Fritch, Dumas, and Amarillo, but they weren’t large or close to us, and firefighters got them under control. It appeared that the worst day would come on Sunday, so Kris and I began discussing plans, in case we had to evacuate … again.

At dawn on Sunday, the wind was calm. A layer of thin clouds covered the sky and I could smell dampness in the air. It didn’t have the feel of a bad fire day, but NOAA’s National Weather Service Prediction Center saw something else:

“A compact belt of 80-90 knot mid-level winds—near the base of a large-scale western U.S. trough—will move eastward over the four corners region and emerge over the plains through tonight. As this occurs, a lee cyclone over eastern Colorado is expected to rapidly deepen to ~996 mb while shifting toward western Kansas/Nebraska by evening. An associated dryline will extend southward from the surface cyclone—initially being located along a N/S line near the Colorado/Kansas and Texas/New Mexico borders this morning before surging eastward into western Nebraska, western Kansas, most of the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandles, and western portions of the Edwards Plateau into this evening. A cold front is then forecast to shift across much of the central and southern High Plains tonight.”

The language of climatology had always been opaque to me, but I understood the bottom line: This was likely to be a very bad day on the Southern Plains, and the “critical” area covered 238,000 square miles. There were a lot of ranch homes, trailer houses, and double-wides in that expanse of prairie, and Kris and I lived in one of them.

It was hard for me to judge just how vulnerable we might be this time. The 2017 fire had killed thousands of cedar trees and destroyed their canopy of sappy, flammable foliage, but it had left blackened trunks and limbs that could, under the right conditions, make a very big fire. The “right conditions” would include enough tall grass and enough wind to ignite a tree trunk. We had a lot of tall grass.

Kris and I agreed that she would go to church and stay the night in town. I assumed that I would join her in the afternoon, maybe running from a fire. She began the 40-mile drive to town in her Explorer loaded with boxes of clothes, family pictures, and the quilt she was working on. We had already made it a practice to carry our musical instruments, laptops, and charger cords with us any time we left home.

Staying at the ranch on a red flag fire day involved a certain amount of risk and was probably pointless, but this was my home and I didn’t want to leave. I had Rosie with me, the red heeler pup who had been my loyal companion after the 2017 fire.

We had a buffer of bare ground and mowed weeds around the double-wide, and had installed a metal roof for exactly this kind of situation. In a firestorm, a metal roof offers some protection from flying embers. If a fire appeared to be heading our way, I would start two sprinklers to wet down the south and west sides of the house. There wasn’t much else I could do.

But I worried about my writing office, a 12-by-30-foot trailer house with log veneer siding that gave it the rustic look of a cabin. It had a buffer of bare ground and mowed weeds around it, and a metal roof, but I was concerned about the wood siding. It had gotten very dry over the past five months. A hot fire might ignite the wood even if the flames never reached the structure.

I hooked up the water trailer to my pickup and began filling the 500-gallon fiberglass tank. While it filled, I moved a computer, some tax records, vehicle titles, and checkbooks from my office to a metal barn, then moved some boxes from the house, things Kris had packed up that morning: coats, boots, dresses, her sewing machine, and other items she had shopped for and bought in the months after the 2017 fire.

The thought of having to go through that ordeal again was depressing to both of us, but especially to her. As she said, “Since you never shop, you have no idea.”

On a windy day, smoke travels a long distance. You can smell it long before you see it, and when you smell it, you know you’re in the wrong place—downwind.

I spent an hour spraying water on the wood exterior of my office, then wetting down the grass around our 45 kW diesel generator. The 2017 fire destroyed hundreds of utility poles and miles of power lines, and it took crews a week to restore service to rural customers. Our modular home was all-electric. When the power went out, we had no lights, heat, or water. The house became a dead shell, which underscored the importance of having a backup generator and protecting it from fire.

Several times in the afternoon, Rosie and I drove the Polaris Ranger to a high spot above the canyon where I had an unobstructed view of the prairie country in all directions. I expected to see smoke but did not.

Back at the house, I tried to read Biblical Archeology Review but found myself making frequent trips to the porch to test for smoke. On a windy day, smoke travels a long distance. You can smell it long before you see it, and when you smell it, you know you’re in the wrong place—downwind. On this ranch, in this kind of year, when you smell smoke, it’s time to hit the road.

At 5 o’clock, the wind began to diminish. I called Kris and told her that I intended to stay the night at the ranch. I cooked a modest supper and watched a movie and continued checking for smoke. At 9:30, I retired with a book and opened a window in the bedroom. If I awoke and smelled smoke, I would load two bags, one dog, and my banjo into the pickup, and head for town.

I don’t know if the smell of smoke would have pulled me out of sleep or not, but I got lucky. I awoke at 6 a.m. and the house was still standing. Rosie and I had made it through the night.

Monday brought more high wind, this time out of the north, and we remained under a critical red flag warning. I sprayed more water on my office and spent another day checking for smoke. Rosie and I stayed at the ranch that night and awoke to face still another day of fire danger, this one being March 6, our fire anniversary.

It was an ugly, cold, somber day, filled with sad ghosts of memory. A few friends remembered, and called or sent text messages. I sprayed water and checked for smoke. At 3 o’clock the wind speed reached 29 mph and the relative humidity dropped to 10 percent, but we had no fires. Around 6, the wind slacked off and Kris returned. With her there, the house became a home. We celebrated our fire anniversary with a glass of wine.

Around 6, the wind slacked off and Kris returned. With her there, the house became a home.

Those three days of waiting for catastrophe now seem a fog—tense, tedious, and probably without purpose. Nothing felt right or comfortable. You’re tempted to call someone, but who? And what would you say? I’m remembering last year and it’s sad and scary? So you fret and pace and indulge in flights of self-pity.

“Why me, Lord? Wasn’t one burnout enough? Our friends are tired of worrying about John and Kris. Last March, they donated food, clothes, furniture, hay, kitchen supplies, fencing material, and money. They’re tired of helping us, and we’re tired of needing help.”

But then you step into the light of perspective. Shirley Cooper, a member of our church, died Sunday night while I was alone on the ranch, on edge and feeling sorry for myself. She had lived with cancer for 15 years, with all the pain, indignity, fear, and discouragement that comes with cancer treatments and interminable trips to Houston and Amarillo.

What was I whining about?

I had never seen or heard of wildfires until 2006. Now they have become almost commonplace and we are learning to live with them. Last year was the worst, most expensive fire year in U.S. history. Some experts are convinced that these extraordinary fires are a result of man-caused global warming, others think not. It has become a screaming match. I don’t know which side has the honest science, if either one does.

But this I know. My parents and grandparents didn’t tell stories about the kind of wildfires we saw in 2006 and 2017—and might still see again in 2018. For those of us who live in an ocean of prairie grass, this is something new and frightening.