Off we went. Instantly we were plunged into a rooster tail of dust and could see almost nothing either ahead or behind. I lost sight of the trailer but kept following the dust cloud. Occasionally the road forked—I followed the direction in which the dust cloud hung and hoped the wind hadn’t moved it. I had no idea if Dillon was behind us. We met other vehicles roaring the other way, all rushing to get around the fire before someone got smart and closed this route as well. The road was so narrow we were often forced to the very edge where the gravel was coarse and piled into a little ridge.
The dust grew darker; it was now mixed with smoke. Cows wandered in forlorn groups. Miriam was taking pictures. “I see flames,” she kept saying, pointing to both sides of the road. (They were only small flames.) We hurtled on. A guy coming the other way flagged us down and told us to watch out for a cattle guard ahead—one man already had a flat tire from it. He must have hit it wrong, for it wasn’t a problem for us, crossing in the middle and going slowly.
At a major fork, our guide was waiting for us. We stopped for a while to see whether Dillon was behind us, but there was no sign of him. I hoped he didn’t have a flat. He and Tamara were both experienced in the bush—I knew they could look after themselves, and the presence of other drivers meant someone would stop if they needed help. Our guide was anxious to move.
The smoke was now high in the sky, like a lid above our heads. But the flames were behind us and the scruffy, brittle forest ahead was clear in the hot, late sun. Now, however, the road was even rougher. On we flew, following the dust plume, rocks the size of tennis balls sliding under our wheels. And then suddenly, down a hill, there was the Forestry building and the tiny town of Alexis Creek, seemingly deserted like a city abandoned in a disaster, which I guess it pretty much was. Two hours after we were first turned round, we were back on Highway 20. We were only twenty kilometres from the aggressive column of smoke at Lee’s Corner, but we were on the right side of the fire. The sky was clear, and now it was calm. Not because it was later in the day, but because the fire wind wasn’t blowing here. This country is famous for the contrast between gales that roar wildly through mountain passes and dead calm areas elsewhere. It was now about 8:00 p.m.—still full daylight at this time of year. Two hours to go. We stopped in at the Tsi Del Del store to let Tamara’s mother know that she and Dillon were hopefully behind us, then continued steadily along the empty highway. Logging trucks had been forced to quit hauling just the day before. Logging always has to stop when the fire hazard is high: too much risk of iron hitting rock and causing sparks. Logging trucks constitute the majority of traffic this far west, and without them the road was eerily quiet.
Twilight suffused the land about the time we drew close to the mountains. It was cool enough to close the van windows. The nights never get truly dark at this time of year and only the brightest stars were visible. Our headlights cut a lonely swath through the dimness.
Past Tatla Lake—forty minutes to go. Not far west, the road bends sharply to cross a river. As I slowed for the turn, I suddenly smelled it. Smoke. Oh! No! It was like a blow to the stomach. I could see no sign of it—the dark ridges against the summer night sky seemed clear and sharp. The river captured the light and gleamed faintly. But the smell was unmistakable—not a chimney fire or campfire (neither would have been present in that unpopulated spot in any case) but the distinctive reek of a burning living forest.
It was another ten minutes before we saw them. Just two or three small fires, gentle and seemingly innocuous; one would hardly notice them if it wasn’t for the darkness. They were high on a forested ridge behind downtown Kleena Kleene.
Downtown Kleena Kleene used to boast a ranch house, a mechanic’s shop, a store and a school, but no one lives there now. The only thing of note is a state-of-the-art sprinkler system, recently installed to irrigate several hectares of prime hayfields. Tame hay is a rare species in the Chilcotin. Most of the country is scrubby forest, either rocky or silty depending on what the glaciers dumped during the last ice age, pockmarked with bogs that provide coarse “wild hay” composed mostly of weeds and sedges. The sprinkler system was idle and tucked against the highway fence, no doubt pulled off the fields in preparation for haying.
To our amazement we could see that the road here was wet. It had rained. The fires burned quietly but steadily. Small red candles in the night. We drove on; I stopped at the old cabin that does duty as a post office to pick up mail from the ancient shabby green boxes. Mail comes to the Chilcotin by truck, three days a week. I had no way of knowing that I would not see that post office again for nearly a month. A few more kilometres and we turned off the highway onto the bush road that Dillon and I share. We marvelled at the puddles on it and the weird way that the van’s headlights reflected off them into the scruffy trees. I had not seen water on the road since breakup in May. The summer dark was soft and cool and calm. Although the drive had been twice as long, the fire was probably five kilometres away from my house as the crow flies. There was no sign of it from my yard.
Day Two
Chris
Kleena Kleene, July 8
The following morning was calm, hazy with smoke and already hot, even though the sun had not been up very long. It was shaping up to be another thirty-degree day. What were the fires doing this morning?
The BC Wildfire Service Active Wildfires website is useful for a quick glance. New fires are red, less active ones are amber, and those under control or out are yellow. Serious fires boast a little icon representing flames. These are designated “Wildfires of Note.” There were groups of these around Williams Lake and Lee’s Corner, and several more were scattered throughout the province. The Riske Creek area, halfway between Lee’s Corner and Williams Lake, was already blowing into quite a big fire, though we had seen nothing of it while driving by. The 108 Fire had its little bunch of flames, as did another serious-looking one north of Ashcroft, which would be a major player during the season and become known as the Elephant Hill Fire. I heard later that ninety-seven fires had started on the same day, all from lightning strikes.
The fire positions are presumably automatically loaded from a satellite and are usually fairly accurate. One is supposed to be able to click on the little flame icons and get an update, but in my experience these pages are all but useless. One can make the excuse that, in 2017, the Cariboo Fire Centre was overwhelmed, but every fire I have been involved with in the past has shown the information to be arbitrary and often many days out of date.
The USDA Forest Service Fire Detection Maps have the same colour coding, but they show the shape of the fires superimposed on a satellite map. The area around Williams Lake, Riske Creek, Lee’s Corner, and for some distance north and south showed splotches of yellow heavily spotted with amber and red. Farther west, and north of the highway, there was another group of fires and, close to home, was a small blob representing our local Kleena Kleene blaze. Nearby, quite a way back from the highway, was a small red dot at the head of Colwell Lake, a glacier-fed body of water buried in a deep trench. I had once looked down upon it from a nearby mountain and knew it to be a startling turquoise blue.
Another red dot was of some concern to me. It was not big enough to be a “Wildfire of Note” so there was no additional information available, but it was, as far as I could judge, only two kilometres north of my house. Winds did not often travel at great speeds from that direction, but there was no natural barrier between us and the fire; no road, river, swamp or large area of water. In highly incendiary conditions, a blaze smaller than a campfire can grow very rapidly.
Strings of bald sand hills bracket my property. From these dunes there is quite an extensive view of the country toward the mountains. The McClinchy Creek runs below the hills; Highway 20, backed by forested foothills, lies parallel half a kilometre away. The mountains behind them are not all that high, but a good portion of them is above the treeline and they never quite lose all their snow.
Miriam and I trudged up the loose, silty slopes of the dunes to where we could see