If it’s to end in fire…

For the past three days the house has vibrated with the sound of helicopters passing overhead, bearing their burdens of water-filled bladders to the Burro Fire on the far side of the Catalina Mountains. Early in the day clouds form, as volumes of water rise into the dry air, but by the evening only a smudge of smoke lingers in the sun-baked air. Traffic lights went out on Oracle as I drove down the highway to get cat food, and then the power went off and on twice more while I waited in line in the store. They wrote down the SKUs of the items in our carts, then walked back to the shelves to get prices, before using a battery-powered calculator to tally the total, and running a manual credit card swipe. The manager had to teach the clerk how to work the manual slide machine on the spot. “It’s the heat,” they explained apologetically, “and the high demand for power.”  Many people left the store empty-handed, unwilling to wait when technology failed, confident of its return … and theirs. How quickly we forget the slower pace of even thirty years ago, or a past when we understood there were limits beyond which this lifestyle is unsustainable.