A Climate Refugee – Of the Most Privileged Sort

I’ll start with the beautiful. By early August the garden that Kai and I were cultivating was popping! We were eating green beans, corn, lettuce, cucumbers, beats, radishes, potatoes, zucchini — boy were we eating zucchini, also eggplant and tomatoes were just starting to come on, as well!

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It was also proving to be one of the best blackberry years in memory for the folks living in Oakridge. In a three minute walk from my front door I could start picking more blackberries than I could ever eat!

July was also an incredibly fortunate month with guests coming from all over California to visit! I so appreciate people coming out of the there way to spend time with me! Robin came with friends for a great three days of mountain biking in celebration of her birthday, Ellen did the marathon drive from Santa Barbara and we did several great hikes and had a lovely free campground all to ourselves, and then Jesse flew up for a long weekend!

While Ellen and I were camping about an hours drive from Oakridge, we had the privilege of sleeping through a rare (these days) summertime rain! That’s the good news, the bad news didn’t become apparent until we were back in town. Near town that night, as well as on a couple of following nights, there were a bunch of lightening storms. Oregon was already in a drought state before we had the “heat dome” earlier in the summer – three days of temps up to 118 degree F in Oakridge. Many trees were burnt to a brown crisp on their southern aspect and the whole forest is a tinder box. Due to this constant dry state, lightening = fire. A dozen or more fires started that week. One of those fires happened to be quite close to the east end of town where I was living. Jesse still came for his visit and we were able to sneak in a few small bike rides when the winds would shift and clear the air for a few hours. During smoky times we would hide inside with the AC and air purifiers running.

During Jesse’s visit the fire closest to town continued to move in our direction. First the areas surrounding my end of town were on a Level 1 evacuation order (pay attention to the media constantly in case things get worse), then the surrounding area went to Level 2 (have your bags and livestock packed, ready to hit the road at a moment’s notice) and the town itself went to Level 1, then the night before Jesse’s departure my neighborhood went to Level 2 and the fire was within a couple of miles of the edge of town. Additionally, another super hot weekend with temps above 100 degrees was on the way. At this point I wasn’t waiting around if I could help it. I enjoying living car free for the last two years, but dealing with the need to evacuate without some control of when I went and whether or not I could take any of my belongings was causing me a lot of stress! I knew I had several options for a ride out of town, but then where would I go, how would I get myself to someplace where I could actually breath the air, what if my bicycles (my only real belongings) were left behind and burned?

I had actually been asking these questions for several weeks, both because of fire risk, but more so wondering how I was going to get back to California at the end of the summer. Car rental prices are astronomical during Covid. Used car prices are up 30%. A new car was not on the table. The direct train south to Santa Barbara (on which I could normally take a bike or two) is still not running because a bridge had been destroyed by the Dixie fire in California. I was definitely feeling trapped. Climate crisis is here. We are living it. If you haven’t looked at smoke maps of the North American West, take a look. New fires start almost daily, some of which they manage to put out right away and others become conflagrations. There are only so many firefighters and so much equipment. At some (likely very near) point they won’t be able to protect towns anymore, and as you probably know, a few small towns have already fallen this year and in the last couple of years.

With things coming to a head, the air unbreathable, and a mandatory evacuation looming on the horizon, my new community came through: my friend and coworker Kerri let me borrow one of her vehicles and Jesse and I loaded it up with two of my bikes and some clothes and food. Another co-worker also evacuating to Eugene took my third bike to safety. Jesse and I were warmly welcomed in Eugene to camp at the home of the owner of the bike shop where I had been working. McKenzie and his family fed us dinner and allowed us to sleep on the trampoline, to avoid being harassed by the goats and dogs. It was clear I needed a vehicle to extricate myself from this situation and get to the coast where I could breath the air, as Eugene was also starting to experiencing a lot of smoke from the fires near Oakridge. I started answering Craigslist ads and dropped Jesse at the airport the next morning. The following 48 hours were a whirlwind of Craigslist communications and test driving cars. I finally settled on a reasonable deal on a 2011 Subaru Outback. Subarus have never been my dream vehicle, but it was a practical choice with good resale value down the road and more importantly had been well cared for, so I could immediately start driving it long distances without concern. Fitting in a visit to a mechanic during this high stress shopping frenzy was not an option.

When I first evacuated Oakridge it was with the mindset of hopefully being back in a couple weeks once the air had cleared, but during this process I started to lose faith in what the rest of the summer looked like. Believe it or not it wasn’t even “fire season” yet, though clearly massive fires are now a constant risk. There are so many fires in the state the the chance of consistently good air quality is now very low until the autumn rains began. Due to the fires, the bike shop wasn’t very busy and at this point it just didn’t make much sense for me to stay. Instead the mission changed to gather all my belongings and likely not come back this season. As soon as I purchased the car I headed back to Oakridge to get the rest of my belongings and say goodbye. I had one more problem to solve before leaving the area — I needed a bike rack to be able to take everything with me. Like all bike related parts, bike racks are tough to come by these days. Once again, community came through and at the last minute some good friends were able to come up with a rack for me that is either on very longtime loan, or more likely I’ll be buying it at some point in the future.

Goodbyes were very teary! I was not ready to leave Oakridge. I was very much enjoying my experience working at the shop and growing as a bike mechanic, there were still trails I hadn’t ridden – so many trails!, the garden was booming, and most of all I loved living with Kai and her nutty dogs! Folks at the shop seemed understanding that it made the most sense for me to go and I’ve been told I am welcome back next year if that works out for me. Right now I am in Santa Barbara with Jesse, reorganizing my life and belongings once again and catching up with friends here. In early September Jesse and I hope to hit the road with our bikes for a couple of weeks — going to whichever mountains or forests have the least amount of smoke or fire. My hope is that Jesse can then get home on public transportation until I will need to be back in Santa Barbara for a couple of appointments in mid-October. I could feasible head back up to Oakridge to work late Sept/early Oct if they need some help filling the schedule, but to be honest, with Covid numbers going up I really don’t want to interact with the public on a daily basis over the next couple of months. I’m currently six months out from my second vaccination and evidence is starting to suggest that by eight months your protection is starting to wane. Apparently as a country we are going to continue to watch the world unravel in terms of the climate crisis and continue to foster the formation new and more virulent strains of Covid by not vaccinating at adequate levels. I don’t know what to say or do about any of that at this point.

I am a climate refugee now – I have been chased from my home by fire and smoke. I also have the utmost privilege because I had the financial stability to purchase a car and remove myself from the situation. This is not true for so many people and we will watch entire countries be destroyed by flooding, fire, and disease. The future is now and we have a front row seat to the repercussions of a century of excess. It’s not going to be pretty. Hold your loved ones close and please try and act with kindness and an eye toward the greater good.

This image seems to sum up what the average US citizen has to say to each other and the rest of the world. Let’s change that.