Aug 17th was suppose to be a easy weekend of horse vaulting clinic for our older daughter. The summer had been pretty uneventful until now. I had many plans for fire safety but these were left by the way side. I always feel overwhelmed by the to do list and ended up in disputes with my wife in regards to balance. She felt the country should be relaxing and a place where she can enjoy raising children and having horses.
Having a large uncared for property was far from relaxing for me. Having animals made it that much more stressful. My choice of animals were for food security. Being raised by immigrants who struggled everyday to establish shelter for the family and food on the table, having pets and fun were last on the list. Life for my siblings and I is much more plentiful than it was for our parents. Our family worked hard and sacrificed much in terms of fun; there aught to be much less to worry about today. I find it hard to put aside the values I was raised with. The choices were clear: give up those worries and establish a balance of work and pleasure or to give up everything and live alone, give up that which I am working for. The truth is there is only one choice and that was to find a balance that would suite everyone and keep together the reason to work.
This has been a hard summer to finally let go some of my insecurities, my sense of righteousness about working hard. Building a homestead is difficult and many times I thought I would break. Then life, the smiles on my girls’ faces and the joy this place brings them, tells me to toughen up.
People may struggle with every bit of themselves to establish security but then mother nature comes along and show them how insignificant their efforts are. I got a message from Alli at 3pm with a photo a smoke plum from he Kookipi fire, 25km northwest of up across the river. She soon realize it raged into our friends farms and homestead near the Nahatlatch river. She was at the pool with kids relaxing but that ended quickly in need to hookup the horse trailer to rescue a friends horse on the fire’s path. She made haste and set off in her bathing suite and flip flops. The road was blocked and she parked in the safest place to be able to turn the truck and trailer around. She walked 5km into danger to find the horse, in her flip-flops. She recounted to me the wall of fire in front of her. The horse was de-conditioned and she did not feel comfortable riding it. They walked out of the fire zone just in time. Our friends homestead was then impacted with hundreds of thousand dollars. Their log houses was spared for unknown reasons.
Alli messaged me at 7pm that the fire may have jumped the river and may be 10km directly to our north. She was getting the truck and trailers ready to leave. 2 weeks ago our old 1 tonne truck was in then shop with a huge repair bill. I had wanted to salvage it but later decided to service it with the advice from others. That proved to be a good decision as Alli was able to hook up both trailers and have 2 vehicles ready to go. We were able to accommodate 6 horses. The cow and goats as well the birds will have to fend for themselves.
I messaged my first nations contact at the Boothroyd reserve. It was confirmed, they were being evacuated. In haste I relayed that message to Alli only to send it to the wrong number. I sent it to the contact at the reserve. I told Ama we had to go home and she agreed. We spent the 2 hour drive home comforting each other with positive thoughts. I tried calling Alli repeatedly for an update but she wasn’t answering. I tried calling our tenants to ask them to help her. They said she was fine and told them to leave. I was in disbelief and told them they need to tell her to evacuate immediately with the animals. The communities north are being evacuated and our property is on alert. There are several valleys and peak between us and fire but the high winds made the situation very unpredictable. With all the animals, it would be too difficult to rush evacuation with and order comes. We need to leave immediately.
I was happy to finally get an update from Shanny, a friend who had moved in with us. She, our neighbour Kevin, and Simon who live 25km south of us are there to help. All our horses got loaded. My horse Ayla was a challenge as she was new to us and had not been very well socialized. The dogs with in as well. The remainder of the animals were set loose on the property.
Driving was slow and we meet up with Alli at Simon’s. We had to go back to load the horse Alli rescued. Everything felt like in chaos. Alli told me to drive as she thought I would be safer but making the turn home too sharp, I took out a concrete pillar at our drive way.
Lights, lights, lights!!! I have so many in the storage that I have been meaning to hook up, why did I not find the times … too much playing around!
We spent 1 week or so at Simon’s with the horse tied to the trailer. Everyone behaved well but Texas our Karakachan gaurdian dog was getting totally stressed out. Then frequent bear visits around the horses freaked Alli out. The fires at Boothroyd had settled and Alli decided we should go home.
Rough Canyon Ranch 