ahhhhh fall...

in Southern California.

This is what I saw at 4:45pm today when my husband called me to come upstairs and look out the window. My heart was in my throat and from somewhere I heard my voice chanting "Oh god, oh god, oh god.."

It's been nearly a year since wildfires consumed so much of Southern California that hundreds of thousands of people where evacuated, thousands lost their homes, and a handful (far too many) lost their lives. My family never had to leave, but we were packed and glued to the news, for days.

I've been thinking about those fires a lot the last couple of weeks. "It's October again, fire season again."  I'd been assuring myself that, while lighting does strike twice or more, it's unlikely that we would see such a horrific fire season again so soon.

The fire pictured above is on Camp Pendleton, a military training facility and Marine Corps base which covers about 200 square miles of mostly open land and boarders the city I live in. The last updates, a few hours ago, said that the fire has consumed 1000acres of brush, was approaching a golf course, but was still not threatening any structures. Whew... for now.

There's no reason to assume that things will get out of control this time. The authorities seem to be taking this all very seriously, over manning the response and accepting assistance from other agencies. And I'm trying not to get overly dramatic...

...but I can say honestly, this is helping me to feel better about Seattle. No, actually, it's amongst a few things that are making me really excited about Seattle. Some of the others? Welp, it's been in the 90's here the last few days. Next week it suppose to be the same with the added joy of Santa Ana winds (big dry gusty winds which make fire fighting almost impossible). Did I mention it's OCTOBER!!

I'm ready for seasons in Seattle.