Ashes, Dust and Concrete Steps

On Monday, July 22nd, I walked into our home exhausted from the five hour drive from Kamloops after a long weekend vacation with Ryan. There was a severe thunderstorm warning and I knew the fires were still around but far enough from the townsite that I didn’t feel concerned. I was anxious to get home and back to my daily routine. 

Half an hour after I walked in the door, an evacuation alert started. I called Ryan in a panic and in tears. I felt anxious at the possibility I would go to bed on high alert and be asked to leave in the middle of the night. I re-packed my bag as if I was heading back to Kamloops for a week. I made sure I had some comfortable summer clothes and my bike stuff.  I reviewed the evacuation list on the town website. I packed the flashlights, batteries, phone chargers, In-Reach, warm clothes, passports, water and food that was suggested. I prepared in case the power went out and I had a shower. It didn’t occur to me that we wouldn’t be back to our house.

Within the hour, the alert turned to an order and we were told to leave. At 11pm, I got into the car. What is normally a less than five minute drive took an hour and a half before I got onto the highway in a long line of red tail lights. We all drove the winding mountain road through a thunderstorm and heavy rains. Not once during that drive did I think that we wouldn’t be going back.

I pulled into Valemount at 230am and slept at Ryan's colleagues house. I woke up at 6am to a slough of text messages. I walked to get coffee. Valemount was crowded with evacuees. I walked by cars full of families sleeping next to their cats, camping trailers set up in parking lots, vehicles loaded up with every item imaginable, people wandering like zombies in pajamas, and tents pitched in fields. We were in various states of unrest. Still, it didn’t occur to me that we wouldn’t be back.  

I kept driving all the way to Kamloops where Ryan already was, I had driven a 1000 kilometers in twenty four hours. We didn’t yet talk about the possibility that we wouldn’t be back.

On Tuesday, I got back to work. I stayed focused on the work and I stayed distracted from my thoughts. We obsessively checked our social media for updates. Things looked grim but still, we didn’t talk about not going back.

By Wednesday, we saw pictures of structures on flames that were near our house. Once we heard the gas station caught fire, we figured our home would soon be on fire too. We continually stalked social media for updates. We prepared ourselves for the possibility that our home was gone. We shed tears for the home we were building, about how our mountain town living was coming to an unexpected end and for the irreplaceable items that would be lost. We worried for those who were in town fighting the fire. We didn’t know what to do, so we went to eat nachos and chicken wings. 

On Thursday morning, we confirmed that our house was gone. A colleague of mine sent a photo - he wasn’t even sure it was our house because the town had become unrecognizable but he knew it was our street.  We drove 12 hours to come to Hinton so that Ryan could work and help out in the way he knew how. We bought an entire pie and ate it with the only fork we owned. We talked about all the things we’d have done differently. We bickered under the stress of our upheaval and we cried more as we mourned what would become our past home. 

On Friday, Ryan went to work in Jasper and he got the first visual of the spot that was our home. Before he sent me the pictures he asked, “Are you sure you are ready?” All that was left was the concrete steps. 

Whatever we owned fit in our SUV and it seemed that most of what we have now was not the stuff of significance. For the first 6 weeks, it felt like we permanently packed for a mountain biking trip. We were prepared to go for a day hike or a paddleboard. At the time, I could see the humor in it but now, I feel pathetic about that. 

You would think that shopping for new stuff would be fun. But it’s not. The stores have been generous with their discounts but it’s overwhelming as to where to even start. Every time we shop, we are shopping for replacements of something we had, and it’s never quite the same. It feels that even if we “upgrade” it’ll never be as good as what we had.

For a while, the mornings were the worst. They were the time when I would wake up not knowing where I was after having slept in so many beds and I would start the day having to realize that I wasn’t in my bed and the bed I had, I’ll never get back. The first thing Ryan wanted to replace was his pillow so he could have somewhere familiar to lay his head every night. 
 

Occasionally, people will ask me about the evacuation and the responses are varied. At times, some respond with an empathetic, “How could you have known?” Other times, I perceive there to be an implication that I should have done a better job of preparing to leave, as if I should have thought about grabbing the irreplaceable valuables. Some people react by letting me know it's less of a loss because we didn't own our house and I find myself explaining, "But it was our home." I’m at the point where I'd rather not talk about it because the guilt I have for not doing a better job of evacuating is real. I feel responsible for having lost everything Ryan and I owned. I feel that it’s entirely my fault that we ended up in Jasper - if I hadn’t applied for that job, we’d have never lived in the town that burnt down. I wonder how I could have been so naive that night - how did I completely miss the possibility that our house would burn to the ground? 

So many people have asked us what our plan is now. I once got asked, “What is your ideal plan?” My response, “That our house didn’t burn down. Do you have a back-up plan in place for if your house burns down?” Three months in, we don’t have much of a plan which is incomprehensible to some and at one point, would have been to me too. Suddenly, our plan has become very simple and very complicated all at the same time. Our plan is to stay with our friend until the spring where we can be safe and stable to have our baby but beyond that, we have no clear answer. The plans for the new car, the fun vacations, the seasons pass to the local ski hill, the adorably decorated baby nursery, and whatever else we had been dreaming up have been put on hold.

Sure, all the regular euphemisms apply and there are times where I know that people want me to just accept them and move on. Most people don’t understand and I hope, never understand this experience. Having now experienced the loss of loved ones and the total loss of a home, I see that people better understand the death of a person - it’s a universal experience we will all have at some point. Unfortunately, we’re now part of a niche group of people who understand the loss of a home and everything that comes with that. For me, having lost a home has re-opened the losses I’ve already experienced. On a particularly tough morning, I said to Ryan, “it feels as if I have lost them all over again.”

I know that in a year from now, we’ll look back in amazement that we got through this and we’ll wonder how we ever survived so much happening at the same time. I know we won’t be the same people ever again and I hope that we are able to re-establish our trust in the world. 

For a long time, my way to cope was to find reasons to explain why bad and tragic things happen - to find the silver linings. I no longer believe there is a reason for everything and frankly, to find a silver lining is a real stretch right now. This is just a terrible thing that does not require a reason and I’ll leave it at that.

Our home - December 2023