Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch

practitioners could help, not hinder, in fighting the fire.
    When the field observers left, David felt good about the encounter. No one had encouraged them to stay, but no one had demanded that they leave, either. It seemed they’d overcome the strikes against them—the main one being the narrow road through a deep canyon full of brush that dead-ends at Tassajara. If fire closed the road, the only way to access Tassajara, there would be no escape from the valley, no way to move people in or out in an emergency.
    Before they’d left, the firefighters fingered the protective clothing in the fire shed, nodding approvingly, saying, “Oh, yeah. You’ve got the good stuff.”
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    On the morning of June 25, the incident management team predicted that the fires in the Basin Complex would burn together in the next twelve-hour period and that the fire would spread northeast toward Tassajara Road in the next twenty-four to seventy-two hours.
    Governor Schwarzenegger visited the incident command post that morning in Monterey for a briefing with the team, made up of members from local, state, and federal agencies staffing various positions, from safety officers to fire behavior analysts, and logistics and finance specialists. Schwarzenegger had already mobilized the California National Guard a few days earlier. “We haven’t seen this kind of condition, this early in the year,” he observed at a press conference. “There is no fire season anymore. The fire season is really all year round.” More than seven thousand firefighters were working the fires, more than fifty helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, more than five hundred engines. Schwarzenegger said the state’s resources were “spread thin.” He advised California residents to take health precautions—to stay inside with windows and doors closed and curtail outdoor activities, especially people with respiratory conditions. “Stay home and stay inside.”
    As the governor spoke in Monterey, those still at Tassajara—about forty-five residents—sat around tables in the guest dining room beside the creek, listening to a rundown of priority tasks for the day, nearly all of which would require spending time outside in the smoky air, breathing heavily from exertion. Many were feeling the effects of the smoke: dizziness, headaches, a scratchy throat, fatigue. Their muscles throbbed; their bug bites itched. Blisters broke on their hands and feet.
    Just before nine a.m., in the middle of the meeting, David was called to the stone office to take a phone call. His voice trembled with emotion when he returned several minutes later and announced that a fire commander stationed at the observatory on Chews Ridge had ordered another evacuation. Fire had entered the Tassajara Creek watershed. “The Basin and Gallery fires are burning together and moving toward the road. Fire engines are staged and ready to leave for Tassajara. They need us out now to avoid a bottleneck on the road. Please go to your room, gather the bag you packed, and meet in the work circle in thirty minutes.”
    There was the slightest beat of stunned silence before the creek rushed in, filling the void with its coming and going.
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    Jane had already walked from one end of Tassajara to the other and up to the Suzuki Roshi memorial site, saying wordless good-byes. In the work circle, people were beginning to gather, embrace, load into vehicles. She said good-bye to David, who was warm but visibly distracted. She hugged Mako and her partner, Graham, Tassajara’s thirty-five-year-old plant manager.
    She felt a deep fondness for the couple, an intimacy beyond their actual familiarity. Mako strongly resembled a friend from Jane’s time at Tassajara thirty years before, and the couple reminded her of her own partnership with Tassajara’s fire marshal during the 1977 fire. All of this tugged at her heart along with the plumes of