Flat on the ground, face towards the sky, I wept as the Earth burned. Flakes of ash joined my tears as they streamed down my face, colliding with the flimsy surgical mask offering me minimal protection. The last 48 hours of my life seemed surreal, my immediate surroundings a hazy orange, the sun just a pinprick of fluorescent neon orange light in the sky. Confusion crept across the landscape as the fire advanced, aspen trunks appeared golden in the light, thunder roared overhead, with no obvious hint of origin. Landmarks once familiar took on a new personality, most of them obscured by the haze. There's a name for what I was experiencing; solastalgia.

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When I left to live in the backcountry I was afraid of a few things. Rattlesnakes, obviously. Not being able to speak with friends and family over phone for a long time during a pandemic, certainly. But the one thing I feared the most, was fire. I always gamble with myself internally, telling myself the odds of something bad happening are slim. But in a changing world the odds seem to be increasing, especially in the tinder box called the Sierra Nevada. As they say in California, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. 

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The when happened on a Saturday morning. I spent the entire week running from lightning storms back to the ranger station. The weather seemed strange, intense thunderstorms rocked the Sierra every singe day, for days on end, an odd occurrence. The humidity rose, also strange, and became unbearable. I remember getting so hot one day I hallucinated and nearly vomittited. One morning I woke up to a haze, and from what I gathered on the park radio, was that most of California had spontaneously combusted, and it was bad, really really bad. 

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My field partner left on Saturday morning to go on vacation for a week, and I was happy to spend a week working and living alone in the backcountry, a special experience to be sure. That morning started simple enough, I made myself some strange oat and dried blueberry cookie pancakes drizzled in honey - I experimented a great deal with cooking odd things in the backcountry to pass the time and entertain myself. I went out on the porch to eat my concoction and hang out with the porch lizards, my company for the week. I brought my book with me, and read for a few hours. By 3pm the smoke was irritating me so much I had to put on a surgical mask and close up the station to ensure I had a safe place with somewhat clean air. In the mid day light, I switched places to my hammock, which faces south. As soon as I sat down in my hammock and looked south I knew something was wrong. The sky was orange and much smokier. I tried not to panic, and told myself it was a byproduct of how the light was refracting in the southern part of the canyon. I sat in my hammock going back and forth in my head with myself, until I decided to climb up on a high point near the station to take a look at what was happening. 

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I wasn't thinking clearly, I wore my tea sandals to hike up a sandy steep ridge, and brought no water with me, or my park radio. Not the best choice to make in a canyon infested with rattlesnakes. I brought my cell phone, which was of no use to me whatsoever, as I had no cell service. Once I got to the top of the ridge and looked out my stomach dropped and I felt a lump in my chest. There was a clearly defined source of smoke coming from just down the canyon, thicker and oranger than the rest of the smoke I was surrounded by. I stood on the ridge dissociating for a bit, denying what I was seeing.

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I came back down from the ridge and began messaging people who could google things for me, I messaged my mom "hey mom can you google Kern Canyon wildfire and get back to me ASAP love you". Then, I decided to call into park dispatch and inquire. 

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"Dispatch 8221." "8221 go ahead." "I'm down at the Kern station and I'm noticing an orange glow coming from the southern end of the canyon, is there a fire down there?" "8221 you didn't copy can you repeat?" Due to poor radio comms emanating from the forgotten repeater combined with a faulty antenna, my radio ceased to work. I eventually figured to switch my antenna after much back and forth with dispatch. By the time I was able to get through, dispatch was clearly irritated with me. The reply I received was "The smoke is from fires in Southern California, there aren't any fires near you." A minute later I received a message on my inReach confirming my suspicions from non other than my mom, who told me that yes, there was a fire about 10 miles south of me that was 400 acres called the Castle Fire. How park dispatch missed that detail, I don't know, but I do know they ended up evacuating for the fire I tried telling them about.