Sonoma Gives: Lessons learned from nature after the Nuns fire

As the resident biologist of the Bouverie Preserve near Glen Ellen, my home for the past 13 and a half years has been the 535 acres of oak woodlands, mixed evergreen forest, chaparral and riparian habitat that comprise this beloved nature preserve, owned and operated by Audubon Canyon Ranch. A core responsibility of my job is to hike the preserve's network of trails, keep our many volunteers up-to-date on what nature is doing at any given time, and to document change over time.

Change over time. On Oct. 9, the house I occupied at the preserve with my 15-year-old daughter, Grace, was destroyed in the Nuns fire along with all of our possessions and all but two of the buildings on the site. The home of my co-resident and co-worker Jennifer Potts and her family suffered the same fate.

As ecologists, Jennifer and I understand the natural and necessary role of fire in California's habitats. When I moved to the preserve in 2005, the last fire to ignite our canyons and hills was the Nuns Canyon fire of 1964, a fire that burned when I was about 1 year old.

Many a scorching autumn afternoon, Jennifer and I gazed with some trepidation at the Mayacamas Ridge on the east side of Sonoma Valley. Cloaked in mixed chaparral and crowned with knob cone pine forest, this mountain range is adapted to frequent fire, on the order of years, not multiple decades. Not half a century. I will admit to secretly hoping for a small, friendly, wildfire — confined to the natural areas — that would reduce the massive fuel build up and begin the cycle of renewal and regrowth to which this ecosystem is adapted.

I never expected that a wildfire sparked in the mountains would reach downtown Santa Rosa. I never expected to lose my home. I never took it personally. Then the October fires raged through our neighborhoods with unearthly power, and suddenly it was all personal. And in the humanity of this life-changing event, I learned a great deal more than my ecological training ever taught me.

As Jennifer told me recently, 'It's like my life before the fire was a clear window pane. The fire shattered that glass, and now I see a million fragments reflecting rainbows of light.'

The light and colors emanate from the hundreds of people from whom we have received incalculable generosity, kindness and support. Within weeks of the fire, the ACR staff and volunteer community (upward of 800 docents, land stewards, research volunteers and other lovers of the land) organized a Meal Train to deliver home-cooked dinners to our families. More often than not, these meals came in elegant cookware that we were urged to keep, perhaps with an extra set of kitchen utensils or a gift card tucked in a breadbasket.

We received envelopes of cash from known and unknown benefactors. My good friends in Glen Ellen, who themselves lost their home of 40 years, made a trip to our new rental in Fetters Hot Springs bearing a card about courage during these difficult times. In the card, they had tucked $300 in cash that others had raised for them, for their own losses. They called it 'our share' of the generosity of our community.

And there's more: A couple who own a local business with deep roots in Sonoma chipped in to pay our rent for a couple of months. In a gesture that will forever bring music to my ears, the technician who had tuned our Steinway piano for years before it was destroyed in the fire gifted us a piano he had played and loved for 43 years. It is the second piano he ever owned in his life. Delivered free of charge to our door by a professional piano moving company.

It is a difficult task to wrap my gratitude around all these blessings from our Sonoma County neighbors, from people I know. It is even more mind-blowing to fathom the kindness of strangers.

In line at Nordstrom Rack to replenish her decimated wardrobe, my daughter Grace found herself $15 over the value of a $200 gift card. Having overheard Grace talking about the fires with the cashier, the woman in line behind her paid for her purchase — not just the extra $15 but the entire amount.

My eldest daughter, Laurel, a senior in college, raised $11,000 in a GoFundMe campaign that was disbursed to disaster relief organizations and families in need. The donors included nearly 200 individuals, mostly college students on the East Coast, very few of whom are from Sonoma County. Laurel and her stepsister, Samantha Sleeper, orchestrated a benefit art auction in New York City that raised another $32,000 for Sonoma County fire victims.

My brother Karl and his wife, MaryJane, mobilized a small army of their friends in Massachusetts who sent personalized packages containing everything from handmade jewelry to collections of cookbooks. And the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brothers of Laurel and Grace's dad, John McCaull, banded together to raise thousands of dollars for food and supplies.

On a recent afternoon, Grace and I went to the Bouverie Preserve to hike the trails during the first rains of 2018. The land was alive with re-sprouting vegetation, gopher mounds, mushrooms, mule deer and birdsong. We encountered red-bellied newts and slender salamanders, banana slugs and band-tailed pigeons.

After the hike, we poked around a bit in the sodden plaster-covered remnants of our former dwelling. It was the first time Grace had been back since the fires. I asked her how it made her feel.

She shrugged and said, 'You know how I feel.' Confessing that I did not, she swooped her arm to the east to encompass the mountains and said, 'This is our real home. The rest is just stuff.'

Jeanne Wirka is the Director of Stewardship for Audubon Canyon Ranch. She currently lives in Sonoma.