By Robbi Pounds, Guest Columnist
On Sunday night, I stepped onto my front porch and looked to the west. There it was, what had been coming for two weeks already. It was finally here. Fire.
Just above my neighbors’ house, Rattlesnake Knob was ablaze. I felt my jaw drop. This was part of the firefighters’ plan. This was a containment fire. But fire is fire, and this one was so close.
The smoke had been like heavy ground fog for days. On Saturday, it had been so thick in downtown Andrews you could taste it, but there is a difference between breathing smoke and seeing the actual flames. I watched the orange patch slowly pouring down the ridge toward my neighbors as people leaned out their car windows to take photos.
I took a picture, too, went inside and sent it to my neighbors. After talking with them for a while, I sat on my bedroom floor, watching the flames through the window like a kid watching Christmas lights. I sat there until the adrenaline left my system, then I texted my boss that I would be absent the next day.
I also admitted that it was time to post about the fire on social media. I had avoided it up until now because I knew what would happen.
Gadugi would happen. Technically, Gadugi is Cherokee for “working together,” but that hardly covers it.
I have worked on the Qualla Boundary long enough to know that if Cherokee folks think you need help, they are going to help you, and help you hard – whether you think you need it or not.
It took less than two minutes for the mom of one of my students, who is also a friend, to send me a message. “We have a log cabin that you can evacuate to.”
It did feel good, knowing where I would go if the time came. For days, my neighbors asked, “Where will you evacuate to?” My answer was always: “Anywhere that’s not on fire.” But a cabin in Cherokee was a much more solid answer.
Monday morning broke with no flames to be seen. The dog and I walked through the woods to Bear Branch. Aside from the smoke, nothing seemed amiss – no burned trees, no scorched earth. Then a sound came at us, not a crackling, but a crunching like thick paper being crumpled. The fire was oozing over the peak behind us. It traveled like lava, slowly crawling down the slope.
Up until that moment, the fire had been a thing in the air. Smoke, helicopters, ash, planes. But here it was, eating its way through the leaves, eating its way toward us.
“The creek will stop it, the creek will stop it, the creek will stop it,” I said to myself as we high-tailed it back to the house and away from those flames. As we ran home, a helicopter flew right over us dragging a giant orange bucket like an anchor. Seconds later, it flew back toward the lake, empty bucket flapping.
By Tuesday, the woods behind our houses was busy with firefighters sawing, chopping and digging – preparing, they told me, in case they had to burn a containment fire. They doubted it would come to that, as the fire was moving east.
On Wednesday night, my neighbors roused me on the walkie-talkie. “Look out your kitchen window,” they said. I parted the curtains, and there it was, the trees behind my house backlit pink like at dawn. Orange lines of flame snaked along the ridges beyond my property.
I jumped in the car and drove east. Flames wormed their way across the ground, traced the peaks of the ridges. It was everywhere, but so were firefighters.
“We’re baby-sitting this fire all night,” they assured me. So I slept.
On Thursday, I was at school when my neighbors sent a message. The containment fire was right behind my house and moving their way. We did not know it at the time, but our houses were two of the 16 officially deemed “under threat.”
I rolled up an hour later to see the fire roaring behind my friends’ place. In photos, the flames look to be consuming the old house. What you cannot see is the half-dozen firefighters tending that fire.
This afternoon, I stood on the scorched earth and hit my house with a pebble. The flames were that close. Everything I own still smells like a bonfire – my hair, the house cats, the living room walls, the car’s upholstery. To me, the fire seems past-tense. I have not seen a firefighter on my land or flames from my window in days, but this battle is far from over.
The writer is a resident of Junaluska and former staff writer with The Graham Star.