our route took us directly away from the Williams Lake Fire. We would be heading west along Highway 20, the thin ribbon of road that runs all the way through the Chilcotin to Bella Coola. The highway first climbs over a ridge then drops down to the Fraser River. The following steep scarp, Sheep Hill, needs a couple of hairpin bends to gain elevation. As we climbed, we caught glimpses of the black smoke pluming up behind us; the fires must have coalesced as there was only one column now. It rolled along with the wind but was topped by a towering dense white mass of pyrocumulus. Pyrocumuli, or fire clouds, happen only when the burn is very hot. They are created by steam from a living forest and fierce heat from flames boosted by a high wind. The forces within are similar to those in thunderclouds, which is why they resemble their tight, cauliflower structure. Pyrocumuli over the wildest fires may even create their own lightning storms.
At the top of Sheep Hill, we were on the high, open country of the Chilcotin Plateau. At first there is little evidence of the mountains that hover just below the horizon, but they will draw closer as we head west. Once on the plateau, as very often happens when coming out of town, we drove beyond the overcast. The sky here was cloudless. The van thermometer was registering twenty-nine degrees Celsius.
We were now faced with a narrow, comparatively empty road. Due to our late start, the sun was already ahead of us. The sky was a blue so pale it was almost white. The land stretched wide on either side. But was that something on the horizon ahead of us? A smudge? A cloud? A fly splat on the liberally bespattered windshield? As we drove steadily on, we could see it was another fire. No: a series of fires, stretched in a line.
From the way the highway twisted, it was impossible to tell if these fires were going to be a problem. One moment we seemed to be pointing straight toward them—the next they would be off to the right. We drew closer and the smoke columns grew bigger. The sun glared through my dirty windshield, causing me to squint. Was that an obstruction ahead? Someone was parked in the middle of the road—a truck pulling a horse trailer. The driver, wearing a cowboy hat and a gunslinger moustache, was out of his vehicle, talking to the driver of a pickup coming the other way. “I know that guy,” I said. “He’s one of my neighbours.” I stepped onto the hot, windy road as he walked toward me.
“That’s it,” he said. “We’re not allowed through. We’ve got to go back. I have a daughter in Riske Creek—I guess I’ll head back there.”
I could not believe this. They could not be stopping us from going home. Surely there was a way through. We drove cautiously forward. We were about an hour out of Williams Lake and approaching a rest area perched on the top of a hill—two concrete outhouses, bear-proof litter bins, a couple of picnic tables. To the south a steep drop tumbles to the Chilcotin River, beyond which a rugged wall of rock and forest steeply rises. It is usually a pleasant spot to stop for a break.
Now several vehicles were parked sloppily around the outhouses, and below us rose a black tower of smoke from the southernmost of the string of fires. Everyone had bits of information. “All the other fires are north—that one’s south of the highway and the wind’s right behind it. That’s why they won’t let us through.” “It started at Yunesit’in (Stone Reserve).” “The wind’s been screaming down there all day.”
A cop was doing his best to turn us back. He was on his own and getting more and more frustrated. He jabbered angrily into his radio while driving to and fro, trying to round people up like a sheepdog attempting to control a bunch of excited goats. He would have been from the detachment at Alexis Creek half an hour west, one of only two RCMP stations along the whole of the Chilcotin.
We milled around getting photos, mostly ignoring the cop. Although the bottom of the hill was invisible from our viewpoint, I knew that the junction with the Nemiah Road lay there. It ran south for several hours, dead-ending at Xeni Gwet’in (Nemiah) and Chilko Lake.
At the junction, there was a restaurant. Although the current building was not the first to occupy that site, one had existed there for many years. In the unadorned dirt yard reposed a gas pump, and four small, very basic frame cabins that did duty as a motel. The location was known as Lee’s Corner, which was part of Hanceville, population three.
The place had already been ramshackle when I had first come across it thirty-five years ago, and though owners had come and gone since, not much had changed. Half a set of horse hames worked as a handle for the heavy door, and a clattery cowbell announced entry. Inside, despite the roaring, rattling fan, the place reeked of years of ancient grease. A new flat-screen TV blared and the coffee was execrable—but the baking was superb. I can no longer eat wheat or sugar without regretting it, but was always tempted by what had to be the best carrot cake in the world. I often complimented the baker—bent over with arthritis, she was unable to stand upright—and she shyly acknowledged my praise. “You know,” she confessed one time, “I hate making it.”
I would also stop there for a caffeine boost to cope with the last slog homeward after a long day in town, and if I had passengers, we would get something to eat. It was the only place along our journey that could be relied upon to serve meals late in the afternoon. Miriam and I had looked forward to having a break there.
Still unable to believe that we wouldn’t be able to go home, or even get as far as Lee’s Corner, we reluctantly turned back. “There’s a field about twenty kilometres east where you can wait,” we were told. I did not know who had arranged for the gate to be open but a dozen assorted vehicles were spread haphazardly over a small, stony field. The land was desperately dry; what little grazing had existed had been mashed to dust under the tires. Some people were strangers, but others I knew. Friday is town day for many of my neighbours. One pickup belonged to the owners of the restaurant so near but so unutterably out of reach. They had been to town to get supplies. Their load consisted exclusively of pop and chips. “Sorry I don’t have any carrot cake,” said the baker sadly, trying to smile. They were expecting the wind to die, as it very often did when the sun went down, so they would be able to go home. The restaurant was licensed, and the owners were worried about looters.
No one believed this would be anything more than an inconvenience. There were fires every year on the Chilcotin. True, the dryness was on the extreme side this year, but drought and thirty-degree temperatures in July were not unusual. A month previously I had set off on a road trip to the Yukon. Green was all I saw on that trip, for I had been dogged by deluges of rain and snow and hail. But on my return to the Chilcotin only three weeks later, my jaw dropped.
The land was as crisp and brown as it would normally be after the heavier frosts of September. The sparse weeds and grass amid the stunted forest were brittle as cornflakes, disintegrating into dust as I walked on them. Fenced areas were bared to the earth, the stalks probably destroyed by animals’ feet as much as their hungry mouths. Beyond the pastures is open range. Open range in this country means forest. Huge parcels of pine and Douglas fir hold pockets of grazing around ponds and sloughs, on old burned areas, and in clear-cuts. The cows are put out there at the end of May and rounded up in dribs and drabs through November.
What had caused the rapid drought of 2017? The summer of 2016 had been unusually wet; the subsequent winter’s snow cover not particularly heavy, but fairly average for the area. No one I knew had ever seen such a short green season, or such a rapid change to brown.
The restaurant owners had their little lapdog with them; their half-wild white tomcat would be sleeping off the heat somewhere near home. Their only close neighbour, forced to evacuate with no real warning, sat in his pickup, scowling. The hot wind coursed through the open windows of his cab. Two large dogs of indeterminate breed were sprawled across his lap; he had been unable to find his third.
My nearest
