No, that isn’t just another photo taken from the hills above Berkeley, where I often drive to take photos of the sunset and San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge over across the bay. Look in the foreground. At the charred remains of a brush fire.
Do you remember, back in the posts about us going on a rocket boat ride on the bay, and how we spotted smoke back on the other side? No, of course you don’t. It isn’t my job to make you remember stuff anyway… Hold on… I will see if I can find one of the photos from the earlier posts…
Yes, I found one. See the column of smoke in the hills in the distance? We watched the fire for a while, right before getting on the boat. I thought it looked like it was near one of my favorite photo spots, but it was hard to tell exactly.
On the way out of town, we drove over the hills to avoid some traffic. I convinced my wife to stop, so I could take a last few pictures with my cell phone, of the fog rolling over San Francisco way over there.
As soon as we got out of the car, we could smell the ash and old smoke.
It came so close to a place I love. In fact, it swept around it, and actually crossed the road and burned farther up the hill behind this spot.
But it missed the little grove of old trees, that always remind me of trees you might find near Bilbo Baggins’s house.
It would have devastated me if those trees had burned.
Other trees were consumed, just feet away.
But that one bit, the place about which I once said: “If you bring a girl here on the first date, and you don’t get a kiss, you should break up, because it was never going to happen anyway” is still there, beckoning to young lovers.
Pouring My Art Out 