This really won’t be our story or journey so far. We are both old enough that the boring novels that would result would not be finished until we were dead… and then our daughters would have to finish said tomes, which they would not do.

Yes, Tiffany and I grew up in Southwest Missouri. However, other factors resulted in each of us exploring other areas out west as we pursued our careers. Ultimately, Tiffany came to live with me in Northern California early in 2016. After learning how to deal with winter-spring flooding and how to sleep through earthquakes, our lives became fairly routine punctuated with relatively frequent trips to Disneyland.

We worked through the beginnings of COVID-19 without much of a problem except for Tiffany being required to work insane hours. Really, it was all fine. We had a plan that even involved eventually moving and taking early retirement in the late 2020s.

Enter Tuesday, August 18, 2020. A helicopter flew over our neighborhood just a bit higher than the the redwoods and yelled at all of us through a very effective speaker system that we needed to get in our vehicles and evacuate. I was prepared to ignore them, but Tiffany was not. I expected to be back in no more than two days, so we compromised by loading up some things in the Explorer, and headed to the nearest Motel 6, which was about an hour away with no traffic. When we reached the bottom of our little mountain, we were surprised to see folks staring at those of us that had followed the direction of the helicopter. Some were even laughing at us.

We cruised down Highway 1 with two small-ish dogs, one cat, a cat box, a few clothes, the cash I fortuitously took out of the safe (foreshadowing), and a couple of pictures from the walls that Tiffany sort of panic-selected. It wasn’t a big deal. We would be back in a day or two. We were having an adventure… just like the Goonies. I was so confident that my Harley and my one-year old pickup were both left behind. I fed and watered all the chickens enough to last them a week. It would be fine.

A few friend-neighbors stayed on the mountain. They would take turns going to the top of the ridge every few hours and checking on the progress of the fire as it pushed further into the Santa Cruz Mountains. Our John Deere Gator was offered as a tool to facilitate these ridge visits… more on that later. We communicated frequently, and the news was always the same: there was signs of the fire on the next ridge, but it was not coming towards are little neighborhood. My original plan was to go get my pickup on Wednesday.

The Motel 6 where we stayed also became a temporary home to quite a few fire refugees, including some of our neighbor-friends. The reports coming from our neighborhood Wednesday morning were as I mentioned: no big whoop. So, I decided to postpone another couple of long drives back to the mountains until Thursday… maybe even Friday when I figured we would be moving back (more foreshadowing).

Meanwhile, we continue working. Honestly, Tiffany was now closer to her clinic, and had a shorter commute. I could work anywhere I had a computer, a network connection, and a phone. Thursday morning the report was the same, and there were even predictions that we would all be coming back in late afternoon.

And then something changed. I still don’t know what. I have some suspicions, but they are very dark in nature, so I won’t share them here. In the early afternoon, the few messages that came through were simply regarding the urgency for those left behind to get out. The wind had shifted, and the fire ripped through the neighboring valley, up to the top of our peak, and began burning down the hill, which is abnormal for fire. The wind, or nefarious players in the area took some of the burning matter and took it down the mountain, creating a burn that now had the opportunity to take advantage of rising heat and work its way back up the mountain to our neighborhood. The Sentinels that had chosen to stay on the mountain were now forced to find a new way out that involved taking out a gate and driving up a long access trail/road to another road entirely. Near the other road they discovered Cal Fire who would be paid and tasked to take care of these sorts of problems. They relayed that they had been told to “let it burn.” And so it did.

The next morning, a friend of mine that had moved into the Motel 6, and I snuck back into the mountains Friday morning. I say “snuck” because the entire region was on lock down. We managed to find a road in that was not manned with law enforcement, which we took to be permission. We had no idea what we were in for. Our hopes began to fade when we couldn’t get into our neighborhood due to downed power lines and trees. So, we parked his truck, and began hiking up the mountain. The smoke and heat were still intense. I guess that should have been expected.

We hiked past the flattened ruins of other friends and neighbors before we reached his property to find the same. He had bolted a safe to the floor in his detached garage. The safe was the only thing standing. He had some property across the street, and we walked over to that area. in the gravel that fronted his metal shop on that parcel, a small green beacon started to become visible through the smoke. It was our 855D Gator. It was untouched, and ready to work. FYI: it is still working for a living to this day.

As you have realized by this point, I drove the Gator down to our property. It was all gone. My new-ish truck had melted in the driveway. The frame, some springs and the engine block were all that was left. Twelve feet behind the truck was the deformed remains of my 2003 100th Anniversary Edition Harley Road King Classic. The heat seemed to have been generated in pockets. In the dining room there was a cast-iron oil kettle from Japan. Six feet away was an intact piece of the housing from the light that used to be suspended above the table where a daughter used to do her homework.

Ultimately, it was all gone. nothing was salvageable. We don’t need to continue the description right now. It’s been almost six years, and my eyes still water and my heart moves into my throat every time I have to relive it. Everything. Everything that had been accumulated not only since I moved there twenty years prior, but for an entire life. It is hard to accept at the time. It’s made worse when you are faced with the fact that the people who were hired to protect us from this sort of disaster, being paid from our exorbitant tax payments, were told to not help us. It went further, actually. The same protectors were told to let the next three towns in the valley to burn. They drove out of town. Fortunately, the volunteer fire-departments said “no,” and they saved every town.

There is much more that could be written, but I believe the points are clear. If you are reading this in the summer of 2026, you have probably been seeing on the news that the same story unfolded in Los Angeles. Let it burn.

We decided it was time. We had long since been tired of the corruption and belief systems of that western state, and now the act of moving got a whole lot easier. Everything we owned fit in one vehicle. It was a little more complicated than that, but Halloween night of 2020 we made an agreement to buy property in southern Missouri without ever having stepped foot on it. Our lives changed completely and we never looked back. God is good.