Usually Michael and I play chess on Tuesday, but this week Tuesday was out, so I went over to his house yesterday instead. A little after 3 p.m. I stepped out onto his porch to smoke a cigarette (yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up.) and said, "Fire!"A huge billow of smoke was roiling up into the sky to the north, visible above the ridge behind the University. Michael got his camera after awhile and I took this photo.
Bonny Doon is an amorphously defined area in the Santa Cruz Mountains ten miles north of Santa Cruz and west of the San Lorenzo Valley. It's heavily wooded, with redwood, madrone, oak, and lots of pine in the higher elevations where redwoods can't grow. People there are prickly about preserving their isolation, despite and/or because of the fact that they are within twenty miles of six million people. There aren't any stores there except for the Bonny Doon Vinyards tasting room. Coming so soon after the Eureka Canyon fire, in which 4,000 acres went up in the eastern edge of the county, the Martin Fire confirms the suspicion that conditions are all too ripe for a disastrous summer here in Santa Cruz.
Fingers crossed.
