Sept 1-7. Fires Spread, Smoke Blankets, Oregon Burns
The hunger of the fires is growing all over the state but the original Hennessy Fire, the one near me, is starting containment. It's been a brute force battle with the CalFire Air Force against the rugged terrain of NorthEast Napa Valley. There are apps that let you watch the special aircraft in real time with a radar GUI. You can occupy yourself for hours watching little blips that are actually flying outside your window and fighting a real fire that is trying to burn your house down. It’s the ultimate reality game. There are special wildfire web sites and special Twitter fire reporters (I don’t want to say influencers). The digital world is full of warnings about fire and danger. Everywhere there are stories about unlikely heroes and untimely deaths. Covid-19 is spreading.
Napa Valley locals have soot and ash on their faces. It looks more like a coal mining town with streaks of smoke on the cheeks of people you see in the deli, outside the gas station, or standing around a pickup truck on the edges of vineyards. Gone are the tourists. In their place are tired farmers, sore workers, first responders, fire fighters, PGE linemen, and winery cellar-rats. They are all warriors and the local effort is to feed these people, let them sleep, and then support what they do.
This has happened before. Three years in a row the wildfires have come. As a community we know how to do certain things - take care of people and animals, save farmhouses and wineries. Half of Napa is tending to our first responders and the other half is ramping up for harvest. The two are about to collide in a mad rush to get the harvest in and get the fires out as every truck in America seems intent on using the Trail in front of my vineyard.
Everyone wears a mask. You don't go anywhere without a mask, you don't go outside without a mask and depending on your house mates you wear a mask inside to avoid the virus. You wear a mask when waiting for the restroom in camps and you leave the mask on with others in the car or truck. It's your most important possession. Gone from this smokey valley are the anti-maskers. Which begs the question: If you wear a mask because of the smoke why don't you wear a mask for the virus. WTF. Things are out to kill you.
There's been smoke for days on end, tireless, grey days with a heaviness in breathing like a thick blanket over your head at night. Occasionally the smog lifts and a bright blue sky peaks out. I don’t know if I notice anymore. This daily combination of fire, smoke, virus, vanity politics, and sheer public stupidity is taking a toll on me. I can feel it. I'm moody. I'm sad. There doesn't seem any point about my work life and the constant Zoom meetings. I don't want anyone to see me this way and I seldom turn the video feed on. It's depression as heavy as smoke spilling over a cliff.
By Labor Day weekend they are forecasting another heat bubble, this time huge covering all of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. I get angry at the news because it's so surreal. We've been enduring these hot, smokey, viral weeks and the headlines dare to say: Beware! Heat Coming. The mere fact that more of the same, only more intense, is coming throws me into a tizzy and I refuse to look at my weather apps. Turns out I don't have to. The emergency notifications on my mobile phone are chiming every hour. The list grows with instructions on red flag warnings, weather reports, fire status, evacuation instructions, smoke alerts, and on and on. It's the new normal. The new fifth season: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Fire. It used to be just October. Then it became October and September. After the past several weeks, it's now August through October.
The tourist traffic is almost nil on Silverado Trail mostly because half of Napa Valley is closed. Miles and miles of evacuations and closed roads. The fire trucks, police SVUs, telephone and PGE trucks, and bulldozer rigs keep coming and going though. These are large rumbling vehicles, straining their engines at 55 mph, hitting the bumps and holes in the road that make their whole steel structures jump up and down. I can hear them coming a mile away in either direction. Calm is not the word here, urgent is the word. There is urgent intent in the trucks driving by. There is urgency in the news that is straining my ability to process it. When I venture to buy groceries at one of the few open stores, there's an urgency to get out of there even though I just got in. That’s why I am depressed. Hurry up and wait.
I sit on my porch when the air is okay to breathe and I listen to the traffic and I write and rewrite the same paragraphs over and over. It's about the only thing I can do: buy local, donate money, and stay out of the way. One urgent hot day blends into another hot urgent day with the only difference being that some days are smokey.
The LNU fires are starting containment but only in low percentages and then I finally see the forecast numbers for the long-range forecast: 110 degrees in St. Helena on Sat and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will be 108 and 106, and on into the week. Those are really bad numbers for the start of harvest. It's been a 100 degrees for days now and the fires are still burning from the lightning storms. These damn apps are lying to me again and I frantically cross-reference the forecasts with other sources. The numbers are real and it scares me into real emergency mode.
My wife and I frantically go through the garden, picking, pruning, thinning, and watering. All the plants around the house are deep-watered and wherever I can I put down a thick layer of compose at the base. As we enter the weekend we get up at 5am while it's still cool and do the last of our chores and gardening as I watch the temperatures climb. We decide to stay the weekend and ride out the heat but plan for the red flag fire warning and prep two go-bags with clothes and some snacks, all of our electronics, and of course kitty food. We point the cars half-way down the driveway, charge the emergency lanterns, and place as many bowls of water as we can into the freezer.
I lay in bed and can't sleep. This is Napa Valley I repeatedly say to myself. This is wine country. What is happening? And again for about the tenth time in the past three years we experience first hand the not-so-subtle fact that a tsunami-high wall of fire could come down the mountain and eats us alive at any time during the night. No problem. We'll just point the car in the right direction and pack our bags. Happens all the time. I go to sleep thinking of all the things that might go wrong as I sprint out the door and run to the getaway car.
Sept 7-14. Climate Change
By Sunday at 4pm the heat is 108 degrees. You can go outside for only a few minutes. After that you can feel the insides of your nose dry out and your throat tighten. The humidity must only be 20%.
Monday morning begins with warm winds from the north, the Diablo desert winds from Nevada that circle back over and come down into the California corridors. A new fire starts up north somewhere and smoke drifts into our valley but stays at a higher elevation like dirty cirrus clouds.
On Tuesday the smoke on high drifts down. It feels like I'm roasting in an oven and the pan has started smoking. I find a cool spot in the house and keep checking on the weather. I don't know why I do it. Why do I want to know what's going to happen fifteen days from now and then get all worked up in a frenzy while in reality I'm crotched down in a corner of the guest bedroom hiding from a killing heatwave? They are predicting a weather pattern change in a week or so and I suspect them of inflating long-range predictions just to get my hopeful attention. Damn apps. It's a good thing Elizabeth has gone because I'm in foul mood all day long
By Wednesday PGE decides its not hellish enough and they start turning off electricity state-wide to conserve their overrun grid. However, this year they have come up with a clever idea: let's text-warn everyone who might get their power turned off and make them go online to find out if it’s true. Let's put you on electricity death row and let you wait. I get several texts that indicate I might be turned off, then that I won't, then service is off again only now it's going to be tomorrow morning! Heaven forbid that you don't have internet access.
I spend the evening prepping for no electricity. Coffee is most important (grind it all). Then charging devices and watering everything (the well pump goes off when the electric does). I meant to buy a small power generator last month but there wasn't one to be found locally, meaning California. Amazon said they could ship in February.
On Thursday I wake at the wrong time in the morning because it's dark outside. The smoke is thick and I can't see the cars passing on the Trail. It's a nasty smoke, too, a *Hazard* level on every app I own. I make coffee and stare out the front picture window that has a view but there is none to appear. And then at 9am the power goes off.
I find a good house spot and edit one of my work projects. Editing always makes me feel better and as the day progresses the smoke is so thick that the temperature comes down because the sun is being blocked by the smoke. A wind picks up before dinnertime and the sky actually clears. A patch of blue, then more, then more still as sunset comes earlier this time of year. I go outside to my writer’s porch with a glass of wine, opening a portion of my smoke mask to sneak in swallows. The sun turns orange, oranger, red, and then sets behind the smog banks looking like Mars. I feel like I'm on a foreign plant.
Sept 15 2020 Harvest
More and more tractor caravans are driving down the Trail flashing lights and pulling empty flatbed-trailers that seem to bounce more than they roll. It's harvest. It’s a bit early this year but I can imagine the concerns about getting everything in. The winery is a safe zone. Out here, in the vineyard, it’s a danger zone and your profits are being exposed to heat and drought and smoke.
Fire trucks and ambulances are now replaced by the more familiar flatbed trucks with T-bins (grape storage bins). The bins stack on one another and each holds about a ton of freshly picked grape clusters. Mumm USA, just down the Trail, has been harvesting whites for their sparkling wines for weeks now and I've seen their longbed trucks come in from Carnaros laden with white grapes. There is a lot of chatter and worries and warnings about continued smoke. But how do you forecast smoke? What’s a farmer to do about smoke forecasting.
My grapes are suffering. Raisining has started with the daily heat, a drying out of the fruit so it starts to look like a raisin. Birds and other critters, from coyotes to rats, are nibbling, too. You can see it in the coyote scat they leave on top of the rocks. The vines on the edges of the blocks are shutting down, brown wilted leaves absent of clusters, the result of heat and humidity extremes.
The next day the winemakers walk through the vineyard and lift a cluster out from the canes above it, mumbling something to each other exactly how two doctors might look at the belly of a patient. Their mumble isn't good. Half of the vines have dead leaves while some have little or no fruit. The berries are small and everything looks dried.
It was the heat wave we had last week. That's when I noticed the change for the worse. Some said places in Napa Valley got to 112 degrees and our vineyard was certainly close to that.
Anna, the winemaker walks by and I shout out "Did we survive?" She says "It doesn't look good. It doesn't look good, Pat."
For all the years I have lived on this Napa plot with grapes we have always had a harvest. This year I don't know. They haven't picked yet but as I watch the winemakers walk away, just their heads bobbling along the top of the canopy, I don't think they can save the crop. One of them looks back mournfully before disappearing into their truck. I wonder how much longer this little vineyard can last. How many more years can we grow vines?
This heat, this smoke, this fire. How do you fight climate change with a vineyard?
Several days go by and no one comes to pick the grapes. Instead they hang, becoming more dried, more shriveled, wilted clusters of grapes. I lost the crop. Then I see other vineyards that look like mine. Actually large sections of vineyards with heat stroke, and dry, shriveled fruit. I read estimates that 30% of the harvest has been lost which means that 70% of a large harvest still has to get in, thus flatbed trucks urgently traverse the Trail with T-bins full of harvested grapes. The local rule is to pull over and let them pass and grant them any possible turning right-of-ways. As harvest starts to pick up, pickup trucks get involved, hauling a T-bin or two on trailers. Yesterday I saw an Audi SUV towing a trailer with a single T-bin full of the most beautiful golden chardonnay grapes.
Napans are used to difficult harvests but this year I am humbled. I get a call from Anna. We lost the entire crop.
#Sept 16, 2020, 30 Days
The night of 10000 lightning strikes was a month ago, 30 straight days of trauma. The entire West Coast is having its worst summer in fire history as Oregon and Washington are starting to burn. They have some really big forests.
Vineyards tend not to burn. Not to say that vineyards don't, they do. There's just not a whole lot of burnable wood in there, just green canes and stubbly trunks coming up out of the just-tilled dirt. Not exactly the first choice for a proper wildfire given the option of more flammability nearby, such as oak scrub or dense undergrowth. In general vineyards are green spaces where the soil has moisture thanks to the irrigation. During the Atlas fire in 2017, when the fire was at the top of my mountain looking down upon me, a couple of very large vineyards were in its way and it went south instead of west. That's the thing about fires. They are always in a rush. It's always the path of readily abundant fuel that demarcates directions.
News footage of the Oregon and Washington fires seem so familiar. Both states are shrouded in this deadly haze of soot and ash and I seriously don't know how people who evacuated are surviving. Video clips abound of people living out of their cars in makeshift camps without any kind of masks, papers, or money - all lost in the burned houses. Ever since I watched the largest lightning storm in history begin a month ago, it seems the world is spiraling downward. Politicians fight about forest management but everyone who lives here, everyone who loves here, knows it’s climate change. For the third year in a row we've been under assault and deadly attack. These aren't simply dry years. These aren't laser weapons starting fires from outer space. These have been dramatic changes in how we are going to live.
I worry about the upcoming election, about the things that must change for this year not to happen again. I'm hoping that a leadership change in the White House will launch a green initiative that is proportional to the problems we are facing. The sun’s energy can be tapped. I see it every day in the vineyard. What is growing there now was not there before. Where did it come from? How did it grow there? If the sun can power these miraculous vines into existence it can power our needs, too.
Sept 22-27 Wind
The wind blew. The smoke cleared. It became beautiful.
And in came considerably cooler Pacific air. My god I remember this, these heaven on earth moist breezes that come up from the Bay filled with an almost chilly moisture. Scenes of old movies come to mind, scenes of explorers in the desert, days without water, then finding an oasis with a cold pool. That's what I want, to go jump inside these ocean-birthed breezes. Our little house garden awakens after weeks of huddling.
After forty-five days of war and I mean literally a battle against the onslaught of climate change, the wind blew in on humid breezes and took the smoke out. What climate change, it’s lovely outside? The blue sky, the greens and tans of early autumn, the silvery sheen of olive foliage and branches, vineyards full of purple grapes, make this place look like, well, wine country. What forty-five days of crisis and a changing economy did to us and this world, is not forgotten, but as the wind whips down with fresh air it pushes all that badness aside. My God, I can spend time outside without coughing, take walks, tend to the house garden. I can be outside! And look, things have shadows, and I am amazed with my own after so many weeks of not having one. I can smell things, too, trees, bushes, flowers. It's an amazing experience after so many days of smoke. For weeks we've been living in this opaque world in a white dome and now I get to go for walkies again wearing only one mask to block Covid!
I remember walking a year ago just before all this started happening. Before the Covid virus. I decided then it would be fun to write a book about life in the vineyard, the critters, the country life, grapes and harvest, elegant wines. Instead we face the Covid virus, climate change, heat bubbles, wildfires, smoke, fires, lightning, and political insults. How ironic that the year I am to finally journal about my life in a vineyard, we lose the crop for the first time in twenty years. I am still dumbstruck by that realization and I witness the dried clusters every day. Nothing happens. No one comes to do anything. It's not worth the man-hours to prune the failed harvest. Just wait until spring.
And so the vines will do the only thing they can do, they start to go dormant with their shriveled fruit clusters attached. I wish I could go dormant right now. American politics are getting really ugly.