Saturday early evening began like any other midsummer moment in our corner of Mendocino County, with my husband and I sitting outside enjoying the quiet. Then we noticed it: an unusual amount of air traffic overhead. Within minutes, a call from family confirmed what we hadn’t yet understood. A fire had sparked in Hopland, now known as the Feliz Fire, and the weekend was about to change.
As the fire grew, friends and family were evacuated from their homes. Everyone is safe, thankfully, but the stress of watching the wind, waiting for the latest safety alerts never leaves you. You think about who might be in danger. You think about what could be lost.
The entire community snapped into high alert. Will the vineyards be safe? What’s next? Thanks to the extraordinary work of the firefighters on the ground and in the air, the blaze has been contained. Even so, 870 acres burned, a reminder that “contained” doesn’t mean “no damage,” only that the worst has been prevented. And for that, the region is exhaling.
Moments like this illustrate how quickly everything can change, and how fragile the land we depend on truly is. With harvest approaching, I’m grateful — deeply — that it wasn’t worse.
