Excerpt from “Under Alien Sun:”

IMAGE: thumbnail of Touch the Flame: Stories from the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire the cover

The air was thick with foreshadowing, a cross between the sophisticated, quiet terror of Alfred Hitchcok’s work and the cheesy, over the top sort of daytime television. It was thick with other stuff, too. For about eleven days breathing had been a chore; more than once I seriously considered admitting myself into the hospital.

The valley was under a thick, grey-black smoke tent that muffled sound, cast ash like snow flurries, and painted the sun alien red-orange. We watched the sky, the horizon, and constantly looked over our shoulders each time we stepped outside. As the fire burned nearer the city, licked up neighbourhoods in the Mission, as more and more families were placed on alert or evacuated, we convinced ourselves that the fire couldn't touch us, not on Black Mountain. They overreacted. Their reports were sensationalized. When the fire’s licking at my doorstep, I’ll act, I thought. After all, I had lived through devastating forest fires before, fires that burned far closer to Lytton, my childhood home, than this fire was burning toward Kelowna.

Do you put your life on hold and wait on the whim of fire and wind, or do you carry on as best you can? We chose to carry on. It was Friday, the night my nephews and I played cards at Quantum Games. We expected a low turnout, but the store was packed. A few parents picked up their kids before the tournament started. Many jokes were made about which of Quantum’s inventory we would rescue from the flames, if it came to that. In the background, the radio droned news of the fire’s advances. the evacuation line approached and then passed the store. By eight o’clock, Al, the store’s owner, asked everyone who wasn't competing to leave. My nephews and I left. I looked south along Hollywood and for the first time since the fire started, panic welled up inside me.

“Let’s get home,” I said, “before the roadblocks go up.” We mounted our bikes and rode toward Highway 33. Traffic flowed steadily in all four directions. Riding our bikes along Highway 33 was like riding in a WWII movie: the exodus prior to German occupation. All that was missing was the sound of air raid sirens. The only noise was the drone of the traffic. There were no boom boxes, no conversations. The air was thick with panic, with grim fear.