In spite of the fact that moss grows on just about anything around here as long as there's some shade, we had a huge fire two years ago; people are still living in temporary places in many cases. Because our house is surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest sans roads, we've always feared fire, even here on the Oregon coast, which used to have infrequent rain all summer. With climate change, things are once again terribly dry here. There's high wind (80 mph isn't at all unusual) predicted for the next three days, so the entire area of the 2020 fire will have no electricity, as that may well have been the spark that started the big fire then. We're just outside the area of the planned outage, and hope that it isn't extended: no electricity isn't a huge problem, but the resulting lack of running water is! We do have the creek a distance from the house; no electricity means that I need to take a five-gallon bucket down to the creek and haul the water up the hill to force flush the toilet for my husband. With no water, I simply use the woods...isn't that one reason they're there?

Still, it seems unbelievable to have fire danger once again, as we need heat here every morning. No sun when your home is surrounded by old growth! We had hoped that the very long cold, wet spring through late April, May, and early June would prevent fire danger, but everything dried out very quickly. For the last 10 years or so, we no longer have occasional rain most summers, just one sunny day after another.