What Would You Take?
I live in north San Diego county and, for the most part, I was able to “watch” what was happening with Firestorm 2007. All 5 of my golfing buddies were evacuated from their homes either Monday or Tuesday. One of them lives down in Rancho Bernardo where the most damage was done and he and his family left with 5 minutes warning. It was stressful for him and his wife as we watched television reports trying to find out if the fires had reached their street. Fortunately, their home was unscathed as were the homes of my other buddies who all live around our golf club.
I felt very safe in my relatively flat neighborhood until Tuesday night, when my daughter called from San Diego. She heard that my area was being evacuated and with the Fallbrook fire northeast of here, it caused me concern. I found that the little town of Bonsall (actually, it’s more of an AM-PM, tattoo shop, donut shop and a post office) had been evacuated. It is about 4 miles from here and the winds continued to come directly from Fallbrook through Bonsall towards my home.
So I packed up. It’s difficult to decide what to take in a little Honda Civic when you have to add a 110-lb malamute, a 50-lb border collie and an overweight cat. So I grabbed my passport, my laptop and a couple of suits (because golf shirts are cheaper to replace). Of course, my clubs were already in the car since you never know when you might be forced to play golf.
I thought the rest of the decision would be tougher. How do you pack 20 years of life and memories into what little space was left? I grabbed every photo album, every Costco and WalMart photo envelope, every CD of pictures, and every DVD of videos along with everything that said “family” and shoved it in to the car. That included a non-functioning clock that was owned by my great grandfather, pictures of my grandparents, books on the Fisher family and, of course, all the pictures of my daughters. If there had been more, then the golf clubs and the suits would have been left behind.
Fortunately, I never had to evacuate but I learned a lesson about myself and what is truly important to me. No possession, except my golf clubs (and we’ll say that they were already packed and ready to go), mattered at that time. I want to always be able to look back in time and see my family growing up. I figured I would be that way, but at crunch time, it was true.
So everything here is covered in ash and smells like smoke, but life got a little more dear this week amongst all the fire and destruction in San Diego.
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