5:00 p.m. Wednesday: It Certainly is Uncertain Here!

For the last three nights 5:00 p.m. has been the windiest portion of the day, stirring up both ends of the Gratton Gulch fire into a fury; but not today, however.  Today the winds started two hours early at 2 p.m. and have blown both steadily and erratically (try that on for size!) for the last thee hours--pushing smoke up and down the Creek like a huge snow plow, but are now calm as is all outside..  In fact, earlier mid-wind, at one point when I was (seemingly endlessly now) watering the "lower forty" [not really, we only have 3 acres here but it sure is starting to feel like a whole section of land!], I looked across the Creek (just above where "Smoldering Tree" yet smolders) and the smoke was spread so evenly like butter over the landscape that it looked just like snow with treetops popping above.  Yes, the only certainty around here of recent is the uncertainty of it all--that used to be a beautiful thing, but I am not so sure any more.

 

Now I am faced with a real dilemma, and I need your collective input and help.  Having become known of recent as somewhat of a rebel in these parts (kinda unusual for both me and them, what with this being a pretty conservative state and with me being a conservative Republican [fiscally, anyway]), I am trying to go out of my way to mend fences (hence, the signs we purchased for everyone to put on their fences).  Here is the issue I am now hopelessly confused by and faced with:  (a) Earlier today the homeowners association issued a bulletin "for those above mile marker 8" [that includes us, folks] not to travel downstreamwards (another new word by me, I do believe) after 3 p.m. due to the typically increased fire truck activity on Rock Creek Road (due to the usually then [but not today] increased windage factor); but (b) the Forest Service and the homeowner association (in which I am actively involved) have noticed an important meeting along the road at about mile marker 5 at 7:00 p.m..

 

In order to go to the meeting from our mile marker 10, as the clear mathematics of the unfolding dilemma dictates to itself, we, by necessity, need to leave from mile marker 10, and cruise by all that is between us and mile marker 8 so we can continue to our mile marker 5 meeting destination  (driving is our only option, as [i] all helicopters are currently spoken for and [ii] the mere thought of walking five miles and back for a meeting telling me, most likely what I already witnessed first hand, is enough to make me quite ill--an nothing I have been through during the last five days has yet made me so.

 

What to do; what to do?...aw, what the heck, we might as well as continue in our unusual and currently perceived pattern of living dangerously and break the one "no travel" rule so we can comply with the requested meeting presence--another rule, I suppose. Do you think we are doing the right thing out there; will we have to order another companion to our already planned wooden "Uncondoned:  August 3-7, 2007" sign  to post along our driveway  [I AM going to do that you know!]??

 

Ah, the uncertainty of it all; of that I am certain.

 

RCR