a few sundays ago, nicolaus and i spent a perfect summer evening at my parent's house. lounging in the hammock, eating bbq, and playing games in the backyard. we even managed to make it home by about 10:30 and i was so excited because i thought that for once in our lives we were going to make it to bed before midnight. but about 30 minutes after we got home, we started hearing a ton of sirens go by that sounded really close, which is strange for the quiet neighborhood we live in. we didn't think too much of it until another 15 minutes later when all of the power in our home went out. all of our neighbor's power had gone out too and we started hearing people coming outside and talking about a fire. it wasn't long after that we could actually smell smoke coming in through our window. 
so nicolaus downloaded some app that lets you hear the local cop's radio (who even knew you could do that??) and they were talking about a fire really near to where we live and a power line being down...which was enough to perk us right up and i had to reluctantly give up any idea of going to bed even semi-early. we got in our car to go and see the fire, which didn't take long to find. it ended up being just out of our little community and across the street from us up on a dry, reedy hill. there were a tons of pajama-clad onlookers and police cars and fire trucks. the fire looked massive and there was tons of billowing smoke everywhere. the whole thing was pretty eery. 

we drove down the street to see if we could the power line that had crashed and by the time we made it back, they had shut down our street and wouldn't let us drive back to our home. so we parked our car in a different neighborhood and walked back to our house. i started getting so scared for our little home and all of the treasures and things that we've collected through our few years of marriage. i know you're not supposed to be attached to material things and whatnot, but i started thinking about our cameras and records and photographs and books and snowboarding gear and everything that i would be so sad to lose. i felt like that question people always ask of "what would you pack if you knew your house was going to burn down and you only had ten minutes to leave" was actually coming into play in my real life. ha, it felt pretty surreal and twilight zone-y. 

even though the likelihood of the fire making down the mountain and across the few streets to our house was pretty slim, we didn't want to sleep at our home just in case. plus there were all of the sirens and the chance of us being evacuated in the early morning hours that did not sound like a pleasant experience. so we packed an overnight bag and i quickly grabbed all of our hard drives, camera, lenses and laptop (just to ease my paranoia) and sadly said goodbye to our home. i even scanned around for the orange tabby cat i've dubbed "simba" that greets almost every night when we get home, but he was nowhere in sight and seemingly out of danger's way. so we got in nick's car, picked up my car and headed up to my parent's house.

after finally getting to sleep, i woke up a few hours later and got ready and left for work. on my way there i drove past my neighborhood and there was no fire in sight. i felt so relieved and grateful and had a moment of was last night even real??