Forest Fire
I have never, until a couple of days ago, ever seen a forest fire. I had always imagined it would look like a massive forest of burning trees...as if someone had turned on a light switch in the forest, and all the trees turned on...with flames. If you have never seen one before, it is much less dramatic, yet still mesmerizing to watch. (I found myself staring at the flames from my balcony through binoculars for an hour.) So instead of a huge field of flames, the fire was more of a very long thin orange line that snaked across the mountain. Smoke around the ridge was reflected the orange light from the blaze, and every now and then the fire would hit a particularly dry spot and flare up, sending long tendrils of fire into the sky. Helicopters and special planes (which I later learned had been sent on loan from Canada) could be seen dropping their loads of water onto the flames. I checked periodically throughout the night only to see the fires still burning. In the morning the smoke was so thick above the Burbank hills, where the fire had been, that you couldn't see anything. The biggest fear now is that as we enter the rainy season here in Southern Cal, the soil isn't protected from mudslides. Yikes....anyway...enough of this talk.