After the fire...

I'm back -- and if we're being honest, I really didn't think that I would be.

Not that I was thinking that the park wouldn't be back, or that there wouldn't be operators, just that while the weeks of evacuation began to tick by, and more and more fires seemed to be starting, it sort of felt like our life and our home in the woods were coming to a very abrupt end.

I know there are so many people who felt a hopelessness much stronger than this -- finding themselves in a situation where their home and their livelihoods were under the threat of flame. Many people have lost their homes, and even for the lucky ones among us whose property/workplaces have survived, we all know that things have now changed forever.

On the drive back up to Bowron, I felt a collective sigh of relief roll over me as I drove past the homemade signs that dotted roads through 100 Mile House and Williams Lake. 'Welcome Home', 'We're so glad you're back', and 'Thank you fire crews!'.

But there is an undertone to that feeling of relief, as I drive past the properties that were in the eye of the fire. Most of the houses coming into Williams Lake were miraculously saved by the hardworking fire crews but now, these little houses, that once stood on properties filled with trees, gardens and grasslands, now have only scorched earth and black hulls of pine as their neighbors.

Looking out on this scorched earth, you can't help but understand that these places and these people will never be the same.

Fire changes people -- disasters in which you are forced to flee with only the few things that you value most, do in their very nature change people.

We will all flinch when we see a lightening storm roll in, our hearts will race when we smell smoke and we will all by affected by the days and weeks that we thought it was all gone -- and for some people, tragically, it all was.

Before the fire, we were people who could hypothetically ask 'if your house was on fire, which 3 things would you grab and why?'.

This question is no longer a fun, personality test but instead the cold, hard core of our own experiences.