“Se Cayó el Sol”/The Sun Fell

The past two days the boys here on Rancho Santa Fe have been very busy...putting out wild forest fires. We are in the end of the dry season right now, meaning that everything is brown, dry, and hot. It is not uncommon to see brush fires and charred land as you drive along the carretera/highway. From a distance when you are in a car or bus, no problem; however, the fires came too close for comfort this time.

I was in hogar on Tuesday night hanging out with my girls. As I was leaving I saw a parade of boys heading out towards Tamalequeso (a nearby pueblo). They were all carrying machetes, shovels, hoes, and some carried canisters of water on their backs. They were off to fight a forest fire -- ranch style! I did not think too much of it and continued on with my evening. The boys had been called upon in the past to do the same thing. The next morning when I woke up to do sunrise yoga on the roof; I noticed that the roof was covered in ashes. Guess the fire was pretty close. Wednesday continued on as normal: went to school, did some therapy, and then headed up to the internet right before lunch. As I reached the internet the air was really thick, smoky, and the sky had a weird light to it. I saw Annemarie and she informed me that the fire was back, and this time it was dangerously close to the tías/caregivers’ homes. I couldn’t see the flames, but I could hear them, and I could see the smoke as it spread across the ranch. Was this normal? The boys headed out again – this time boys from the younger hogars were called upon as well. Some of the volunteers went out too. Today was different from the night before because the wind was blowing, which caused the fire to spread more rapidly and was more dangerous for the boys to control. I couldn’t go out to help because I had a speech-language evaluation to do back down at the school (but I’ll go more into that in another blog entry).

That evening, when I went to hogar everyone was still talking about the fire. At this point, you could see it rising up the mountain behind the church, close to Casa Personal. I decided that after hogar I was going to help out. These boys were so exhausted, having been fighting the fire since the night before! I quick put on long pants, tennis shoes, filled up my water bottle, and put on my head flashlight. Here we go...Bombera/Firefighter Sara to the rescue!

A few of the boys led me up to where the fire was. One of them commented “se cayó el sol”/the sun fell. That was a good image, because when we reached the fire that’s exactly what I saw. I have seen wild forest fires blaze out of control on television and the news, but never have I seen anything like this in real life. Words can not describe it. It was beautiful, scary, incredible, huge, expansive, sad, devastating, humbling, everywhere.

At this point, the boys were not fighting the fire, as much as they were trying to control it and keep it from spreading to the ranch. The way they did this was by setting fire to a perimeter apart from where the fire was burning. They set the fire, put water on the edges, and then put the fire out. This way, when the wild fire reached the controlled fire, it would extinguish because it was already burned. Crazy that you have to set a fire to extinguish a fire. I told the boys how wildfires were put out in the United States, with airplanes. They couldn’t believe it knowing that they did it with just their “manos”/hands. It was nice being up on the mountain at night with a group of the teenage boys. I don’t get to hang out with them that much seeing as how I am always with my girls. In our down moments we sat down, I gave them water, and we chatted. One boy, Francisco (a.k.a. Chico) commented: “Perdón la palabra, pero éste fuego está jodiendo la capa ozonio”/Pardon my language, but this fire is fucking up the ozone layer. Gotta love em!