When I was eleven, a mountain right by my neighborhood caught fire.
My mom woke me in the middle of the night, told me to get dressed, and said the mountain was on fire. That was enough to jolt me awake.
A fireman had been going door-to-door in our neighborhood, telling everyone that they needed to be prepared to evacuate in case it got any worse. I couldn't imagine the fire being any bigger, but I prepared in my eleven-year old way, throwing my favorite toys and diary together, in case we had to drive away.
While my mom turned on some cartoons to distract me and my brother, my dad was talking with the neighbors. I thought originally that they were coming up with some sort of neighborhood defeat-the-fire plan, but he was really just at a barbecue, watching the fire with our neighbors. Apparently he wasn't struck with the sense of terror that my brother and I were feeling.
Happily, the fire never made it to any houses, we didn't have to evacuate, and everything was okay. The worst thing that happened as a result was the mountain looking even drier and browner than it had before.
2 comments:
Ha! I love this story. Because I also woke that night to find that same mountain on fire, back in they days before I knew you. :) I actually did have to evacuate though!
Rachel! I totally forgot that you still lived in Utah at that time, hahah! I didn't know that your neighborhood had to evacuate. That's pretty scary!
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