山火，又见肆虐的山火 (w English)

Wildfires raged varociously in  Northern California. When the news came that about 20 counties, concentrated in the wine counties of Sonoma and Napa Valley, were ravaged by the fires, I was standing in the company kitchen, watching through the window the wildfire in Southern CA close by. My memories drifted away along the smoke towards the Northern vineyard.

 

It must be more than 15 years ago, in the spring of that year, we drove up to the north via Freeway No. 5. After we exited out of the deep rigged valleys, we were then greeted by the vast stretch of open farm land, green, lush, vibrant and full of life. Rows of fruit trees, such as pistachio lined up straight.  Sheep and cows, black and white, dotted the verdant rolling hills, grazing leisurely under the sun.  Hours later, a more picturesque scene came to our eyes. Under the blue sky and drifting white clouds, there were acres and acres of well-cut grape vines, hundreds and thousands of them. The bare vines contrasted strikingly with the green abundant leaves, which hung heavily along the underpinning wires or poles. They stood lines by lines uniformly, disappearing to the end of the sights. What a postcard like scene!  My daughter, then six or seven years old, turned her head from the window to me, and commented like a little scholar that this was a place from Chinese Tang poems.

 

I have never really been to Napa Valley, but I guess it should be no different from any vineyard I came across on the trip. Now the places were reportedly burnt to ground, and I cannot imagine on my mind that such iconic wine regions are now engulfed with fires, turning themselves into a charred land, with perhaps piles of burnt and collapsed grape vines smothering in the air, a scene depicted in the movie called “A Walk in the Clouds.”

 

Ten years ago, a rampant wildfire erupted in the area next to where we newly moved in. It started in a remote hilly valley but extended over the other side fueled by the gust wind. I remember that night we walked across the community and flocked to the scene with the other residents in the community.  The night sky was tinged with orange haze; the burning smell inundated the area; the scattered fires were like a fire dragon burning and dazzling on the ridge of the mountains. People said that if the fires had rolled down a little further, our whole community would have been evacuated.

 

As a result of the fire in 2007, 30,000 acres were burnt.  Though a lot of trees remain dead when we hiked the areas in 2015,  new trees and bushes were sprawling over the once charred valley . Nature is resilient, so are people. Let's pray for the people who will have to weather such a havoc, and hope the fire will soon be contained completely.