Fire

We had a fire yesterday. A fairly big one. It burned close to an acre of land behind the house. It was a pretty scary experience, but as I looked back on the events of the day, I realized that we had been blessed in many ways. These were our blessings:

• My father-in-law, Max, spent the morning hunting, but just as he saw the first animals of the season, he had the thought that he should go home. Madeline, my mother-in-law, and I were in the house yesterday afternoon. Max hadn't been home more than a few minutes when he went outside to chain the dog up and saw the fire. We wouldn't have noticed until much later had he not been home. It's possible everything could have been lost.
• I had time to move our car that was parked back by the fire
• The volunteer fire fighters came very quickly. I think it only took them 10 minutes. They had to go from their jobs to the firehouse, and then out to the country in that 10 minutes.
• Scott and his dad had spent the last couple of weeks tearing down old sheds on the side of the entrance to their home. If the sheds had still been there yesterday, the fire trucks wouldn't have been able to pass through the narrow driveway.
• The fire burned around and under two of Max's farm trucks, but the trucks themselves were untouched.
• The fire didn't reach the large gas barrels in the driveway.
• We were safe, the house was safe, and the farm fields on either side of the fire were untouched.
• There were many friends and neighbors who stopped by to offer help and condolences.

I didn't get any pictures of the fire before it was mostly put out. It just didn't seem right to have a camera out there.
The rest of the pictures were taken this morning as Scott and Max were removing a couple of trees that were still smoldering.

When my mother-in-law first screamed down the hall to me that there was a fire out back, I thought it was right up against the house. My first thought was to grab my daughter and our shoes so we could run across the street. At that moment I realized that nothing else really mattered. I didn't think to save any of our possessions. It was a powerful reminder of what is really important, because our possessions can be lost at any moment.