It Could All Be Gone
the world is on fire
As I sit on my back patio, I’m watching ash fall from the sky. Heavy smoke from distant fires has covered the heavens, creating this gorgeous blood-orange sun that you can actually look straight at.
It’s strangely beautiful and absolutely awful at the same time.
Because somewhere else not all that far away underneath that smoke, people are losing their homes. They’re evacuating their families, loading up animals, grabbing whatever they can and leaving everything else behind.
My heart goes out to them, and I can’t help but think about what I would do if it were us(and to be frank it even still could be.)
If I had to leave my home/my sanctuary.
To drive away from this place and then just… wait.
Wait to find out if it burns, or not.
I look around at everything we’ve built here.The care we’ve put into the house and the land, the gardens, fencing, trails etc.. All those little things you work on year after year that probably mean nothing to anyone else, but together make this place ours.
And it could all disappear in a moment.
Gone – just like that. Never to be seen the same way again.
It makes you wonder- what is it all for?
If we had to leave, what would I actually pack? What are the things that really matter- to spend time and energy to take with us?
And then, of course, the animals.
How would we move everyone? The horses – I only have a two-horse trailer(and 4 horses) Math isn’t mathing..
That thought alone makes my stomach turn.
With the recent fire in Summerland, everything moved so quickly that some people reportedly didn’t have enough time to get all of their horses out. Some had to let them loose and hope they could get themselves somewhere safe.
Imagine having to make that decision.
Opening a gate, letting your horse go and hoping somehow, somewhere, you’ll find each other again.
How do you prepare yourself for that?
And I find myself asking questions that really don’t have answers.
How is this fair?
How can someone spend years building a home, a farm, a life — and potentially lose it in hours?
And how is this not some incredibly rare event anymore?
It feels like every summer we watch another part of our province burn. Another community evacuates. Another family loses a home. Another farmer is scrambling to move livestock.
Another sky turns orange.
And every year, we seem to say the same thing:
“This is terrible.” Until the smoke clears.
Then life goes back to normal.
But sitting here watching ash land on my patio, it doesn’t feel very normal.
It makes me look at this place differently.
Maybe the answer to what is it all for? is actually pretty simple.
You build it anyway.
You plant the garden.
You make the trails.
You fix the fence.
You love the animals.
You create a place that feels like home.
Because the fact that something might not last forever doesn’t make it less valuable.
Maybe it makes it more valuable.
And maybe it’s also a reminder that loving a piece of land comes with a responsibility to think about the things we would rather not think about.
Like how we would get four horses out with a two-horse trailer. Because I really don’t want to be figuring that one out while ash is falling from the sky.
