Trial by Fire
/By Becky Jensen, produced by Out There Podcast
Released on September 9, 2021
Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
(sound of running water in a stream)
WILLOW BELDEN: So, I’m out for a hike, and I’ve stopped by a little stream.
And when I was packing my backpack this morning, I couldn’t decide how much water to bring. I didn’t want to bring too much and carry unnecessary weight, but I also didn’t want to run out.
Then I remembered that I would be passing by this stream part-way through the hike. So I could bring my new water filter, and simply fill up there.
The water filter in question is from a company called Epic Water Filters. It fits into a Nalgene, and it filters the water as you drink.
Turns out, it was super easy. I just filled the Nalgene in the stream, screwed the lid back on, and started drinking.
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(stream sounds fade out)
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
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(Out There theme music begins to play)
It’s wildfire season out west. For a lot of us, that means thick, smoky air. Smoke that feels suffocating, and often makes it unhealthy to go outside.
That’s unpleasant enough. But for some people, wildfires are a whole lot more personal.
Today’s story is about what happens when a fire comes straight for your home.
It’s a story that takes us from a tranquil backpacking trip in the mountains to a cramped basement in town. And it offers an intimate inside look at the emotional chaos that ensues when a natural disaster threatens everything you’ve built.
How do you come to grips with a complete loss of control? How do you find some semblance of serenity amidst the tumult?
Becky Jensen has the story.
(theme music fades out and soft guitar music begins)
BECKY JENSEN: Last summer, I turned fifty years old.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me.
In the months leading up to my August birthday, the milestone felt ominous, made me restless, like I had something to prove.
My biggest fear was that soon I would turn into my frail and helpless mother who is slowly losing her mind to Alzheimer’s disease. She still manages to live on her own, but that requires a lot of outside support.
When the pandemic isolated us from her team of helpers last year, Mom grew dependent on me more than usual. It really wore me down and, at times, made me think I might be losing my mind too.
(music fades out)
As a birthday present, I had given myself a two-week backpacking trip in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. I needed this adventure to prove my age wouldn’t define me. That my mother’s disease wouldn’t consume me.
I was determined to start my fifties off strong.
(upbeat music begins to play)
My older sister, Barb, made it possible for me to get away. She agreed to drive up from New Mexico, manage Mom while I was gone, and pick me up at the trailhead near Durango when I was done. She even offered to give me a ride back home to Northern Colorado, which was no small feat.
I had meticulously planned the 150-mile hike down to the last detail, from making sure my pets were cared for, to arriving at the final trailhead on my actual birthday.
I loved mapping out a trip like this. It gave me something to look forward to.
And building safety nets and backup protocols into my plans made me feel calm and focused and safe. Practically bullet-proof.
As long as I had a plan, I reasoned, then I was in control.
(music fades out)
Once I started the actual hike, my two weeks in the backcountry flew by.
(sound of birds singing)
The final morning began like every other day on the trail — lovely, slow, and predictable.
My eyes fluttered open to the sound of birdsong.
(sound of person unzipping sleeping bag and moving around tent)
As I deflated my sleeping pad, I stretched my back, lingering in the release of child’s pose.
And as soon as I unzipped the tent, and wiggled that first foot into a dirty trail runner, my inexplicable craving for fish tacos started up again.
Knowing it was the last day, I packed my gear reverently, giving each item an extra squeeze of appreciation before stowing it in my backpack. I surveyed my final campsite with satisfaction, lifted the pack onto my shoulders, and started walking toward Durango.
(sound of footsteps for a few moments that then fades out with the birdsong, followed by relaxed music)
The hike had been rewarding, but I was looking forward to getting back home.
One year earlier, I had sold my house in the city and bought a log cabin in the woods by a river where I would live and write.
I loved simple things about my cabin. Daily rituals like filling the hummingbird feeder, and walking down the dirt lane to pick up my mail.
I couldn’t wait to get back to my desk, and its three walls of windows that made me feel like I was writing stories in a treehouse.
The cabin wasn’t just my home, it was a testament to my hard work and determination, and the sheer grit it took to leave my old life behind and go after my dream.
It was proof I had agency, that I could control my destiny and carve out a meaningful life for myself, on my own terms. My cabin was my creative sanctuary. A symbol of my independence.
I had chosen its location carefully. Only forty miles from town, the cabin was close enough for me to help my mom, but far enough away to maintain a healthy boundary.
It sat near the wild Poudre River, but not down in the floodplain. It was nestled in the trees of the more remote upper canyon, but only one mile away from the volunteer fire station. I had built safety nets and backup protocols into my plan for home ownership.
(music fades out and footsteps and nature sounds begin)
I turned my attention back to the trail, and my last day of hiking. Up ahead, I spied a large log on a stony outcropping with a panoramic view. And sitting on the log was my sister, who had hiked up the trail to surprise me.
“Woo-hoo!” I crowed, lifting both trekking poles toward the sky in a giant V for victory. It was so good to see her familiar face.
“Hey, happy birthday!” Barb said, wrapping me up in a solid hug.
It was barely 11 a.m. and already pushing ninety degrees. She fished around inside her daypack and handed me a drink. It was chilled. I pressed the ice-cold can against my cheek, and then my forehead, before cracking it open.
Between long gulps, I blabbed on and on about the minutiae of my hike, and confessed how eager I was to get back home to my pets, my comfy bed, and my writing.
“I just love the life I’ve created for myself, you know?” I said. My sister nodded. Took a sip of her drink.
“Fifty’s not so bad,” I added, “But there’s no way I’m joining AARP. That’s where I draw the line.”
She said nothing. No snarky comeback. Not even a smirk.
Barb was unusually quiet, but nothing was going to put a damper on my birthday.
(nature sounds fade out)
In less than two hours, we reached my sister’s car. She had tied a ridiculous happy birthday banner across the windows for me.
“Aahhh, this is great,” I said, pointing to the shiny letters. Barb looked down at the ground.
“Soooo, there’s been a wildfire,” she said simply.
It was wildfire season, so this wasn’t shocking news.
“The fire is in your canyon,” she said.
“In my canyon?” I asked, sliding the heavy backpack off my shoulders and onto the back seat of her car.
“Yeah,” she said. “It started yesterday afternoon.”
(somber music begins)
I realized my sister had been kind enough to let me enjoy my full hike, to wait until we reached the road, before she broke the bad news. I looked up at the harmless clouds floating across the blue, smokeless sky and let out the breath I had been holding.
Near the car, a yellow road sign cautioned “rough road” ahead. Barb was telling me something. I could see her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the ringing in my ears.
I mean, I knew it could happen.
I had weighed the risks of fire and flood when I bought the cabin. But I never thought it would happen to me, not really, even though my property was surrounded by a national forest full of dry beetle-kill trees, long overdue for a much-needed burn.
“I even told you what to grab, what to do, if it happened while I was on the trail,” I said,
reminding myself that I had indeed planned for this, that I knew what to do in a wildfire.
The truth was, I did not know what to do, or how to feel, or who to call in a real-life natural disaster.
I couldn’t even say the word “fire” out loud, for Pete’s sake. So much for bullet-proof.
(music fades out)
I turned to my sister, who was remarkably calm. Her years as a case manager for the homeless — her patience and compassion, her cool head under pressure — were all coming through. It was as if she was trying to manage an emotionally charged situation. De-escalate a crisis.
‘Holy crap,’ I thought. ‘Am I homeless?’
(music begins)
I nearly dropped my phone as it started to blow up in a bizarre mix of birthday messages from friends, and evacuation orders from the sheriff’s office.
The relentless bombardment was out of sync with the peaceful, methodical pace of my two-week hike. The rapid-fire pings erased all serenity I had cultivated on the trail.
This was NOT the birthday I had planned.
(music ends)
WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of Becky’s story in a moment. But first…
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And now, back to the story.
(quiet music begins)
BECKY: I had learned that my cabin was safe for the time being, so Barb and I decided to stay in Durango for the night.
The next morning, we left before dawn to begin the long journey home. We drove hundreds of miles across Colorado, forced to make detours around other raging wildfires.
When we finally reached the cabin, there was no time to rest or reflect. The area was under evacuation, so Barb and I packed up what we could, loading her car and mine. I made a side trip to gather my dog and two cats, evacuated earlier by friends.
It was 10:30 that night when I finally pulled the car into my mom’s driveway.
(sound of car pulling into driveway as music ends)
I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and tried to take a few deep breaths.
The car reeked of ammonia from the litter box. A gift bag sat wedged between the driver and passenger seats. I had picked it up earlier from some well-meaning friends. And now, a trail of glitter sparkled across the worn interior like a crime scene splatter. My dog’s nose was freckled with the stuff. The cats howled in their carriers.
I hooked the handles of the gift bag under one finger and stepped out of my car.
(sound of car door opening)
Holding it at arm’s length, I walked the bag through the side door of the garage and gingerly set it on top of the trash can like unexploded ordnance. I’d deal with it later.
(soft music begins)
Inside the house, Mom sat on the loveseat watching the news and knitting a winter scarf — in August.
Skeins of yarn and piles of scarves, finished and unfinished, were scattered throughout the living room. Winter, spring, summer, and fall — all day, every day, Mom was on a dementia-driven mission to knit scarves for the local homeless shelter.
She offered a scarf to me each time I visited, but I could never bear to take one. They reminded me of her Alzheimer’s.
“I haven’t given you a scarf yet,” she announced, thrusting a reddish-purple one at me. “This color is called Badlands,” she explained. I lied and told her thanks, but I had one already.
(music ends)
I glanced at the blaring television and froze. Footage of orange and red flames,
and a billowing mushroom cloud of thick smoke filled the screen. The TV anchor reported that the fire had doubled in size overnight.
“Residents in Poudre Canyon, about 60 miles west of Fort Collins, are being evacuated,” he said.
“Oh, those poor people,” Mom tutted, shaking her head. “Can you imagine?”
(quiet music begins to play)
I was too tired to handle her broken brain tonight, of all nights.
I retrieved my exhausted animals and got them settled in the basement. After unloading the rest of my car, I looked at my meager pile of belongings. My computer and work projects thrown into a laundry basket. Important documents and photo albums in plastic tubs. My clothes in one big black trash bag.
I couldn’t help but think I should have taken more things with me — saved more — when Barb and I cleared out the cabin.
My sister was heading home to New Mexico, back to work, and I would be on my own with Mom again. Mom, who had hugged me goodnight, saying, “It’ll be fun to have you here.”
(music fades out)
The world doesn’t stop during a wildfire evacuation. We still have pets to feed, bills to pay, people to care for. Work to do.
I set up my office in my old childhood bedroom. It was now my mom’s catch-all junk room — the epicenter of her Alzheimer’s hoarding behavior.
The bed was completely surrounded by two-foot-high stacks of Country Living magazines, old greeting cards, and other assorted crap from the Home Shopping Network.
The mattress was heaped with more scarves and a small mountain of half-used, orphan balls of yarn. I threw a blanket over the bed to cover up the chaos.
(music begins)
Scattered and unfocused, I headed into the kitchen for breakfast, opening cupboards at random. But there was nothing I wanted, just a refrigerator full of rotting food that Mom had forgotten to eat.
I cleared out the fridge and took the trash out to the garage — where I was confronted by the glitter bag.
It bulged with cake, a six-pack of beer, and plastic Mardi Gras beads. A colorful headband from the party store poked through the delicate tissue paper, featuring a jaunty little top hat, trimmed with feathers, and an enormous number “50”.
It made me want to punch something.
(music fades out)
I removed the food and booze, and left the rest of the bag. Grabbing a fork from the kitchen drawer, I returned to the junk room, where I drank warm beer and ate birthday cake for breakfast as I read wildfire updates online.
It’s nearly impossible to get any work done when you’re on “wildfire watch.” The Cameron Peak Fire had its own Facebook page, text alert system, interactive maps, live chats, hotline numbers, hashtags, and community forums. When Facebook notified me that I had become a superfan of my own disaster, I did not accept the badge.
(melancholy music begins to play)
Over a blustery Labor Day weekend, the fire quadrupled in size to more than 102,000 acres. The shape of the fire perimeter on the map resembled a lobster claw reaching to crush my cabin between its red pincers.
In town, ash fell like snow, and the sky glowed orange, apocalyptic, triggering street lights to come on in the middle of the day.
During all of this, Mom was forgetting to bathe and change her sheets. These simple chores didn’t happen unless I reminded her.
But the fire consumed my thoughts, and I became addicted to watching updates, getting information fixes, all day long.
The shape of the fire perimeter kept growing on the map, like drug-induced hallucinations. First, the lobster claw morphed into a wolf, until it eventually shape-shifted into “the monster” with large jaws, gnashing teeth and greedy fingers.
According to the latest map, my cabin was being swallowed. I watched, and waited, for the moment the beast might devour my little dream.
(music fades out)
I became irritable when people pressed me for updates, or asked what they could do to help. I didn’t have the energy or words to explain that each request, though well-intentioned, felt like a homework assignment. It seemed impossible to have a normal conversation with friends, so I withdrew and isolated myself.
I found more scarves in a kitchen cabinet one day, hidden and displaced. Just like me.
(somber music begins to play)
It was the hanging in limbo, the not knowing, that was the most unbearable. I found myself asking, “Did the cabin burn today, or did it survive? Is my dream dead, or is it still alive?”
It was a roller coaster of emotions.
One minute I was giving myself the classic pep talk that it’s just a house, just stuff, and things can be replaced. What matters is we're safe. I distanced myself from it, thinking, we need fire to keep the forest healthy. I reminded myself: this is what you sign up for when you live in the canyon.
The next minute I couldn’t stop crying.
(music fades out)
By late September, the fire exploded on another wind-driven rampage, heading straight for my cabin.
We were told if our homes burned, then we would receive a personal call from our volunteer fire chief. And if the phone didn’t ring, then no news was good news. Each scam robo-call made me jump out of my skin.
Meanwhile, Mom continued to knit hot, stifling scarves for the homeless. Every day, she asked me to take a scarf. Every day, I declined.
I wanted to yell, “Hey, I’m not homeless, lady. Not yet!”
(tense music begins)
One day, Mom complained of dropping a stitch, and I watched horrified as she began to unravel an entire scarf, feeling myself unraveling at the same time.
Like a trapped animal, I snapped, my teeth gnashing and my fingers clawing through the kitchen for a black Hefty bag. I stormed through the house looking for scarves.
I found them squirreled away under beds, tucked into drawers, stacked on dining room chairs. In the junk room, I ripped the blanket off the bed to expose the largest stash of all.
Like a mad woman, I stuffed scarves into the trash bag I had been dragging behind me, and yanked the drawstring into an angry knot. I threw open the closet door, ready to hurl the bag into oblivion.
(music ends abruptly)
When suddenly, I spied a large manilla envelope with the words “MISC TREASURES” written on the front in my father’s long-lost handwriting.
Carefully, I reached for it, picked it up, and opened it.
Inside was a small wooden plaque that used to hang in my dad’s office, before he died of cancer. It said: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
(soft music begins)
I am not a religious person. But this was a message from my father. The message I desperately needed to hear.
I clutched the Serenity Prayer to my chest and burst into tears, not out of frustration or sadness, but out of pure relief. As if Dad was telling me, “You’re dealing with incredibly hard things right now, Beck, things beyond your control. There’s only so much you can do. You gotta let go.”
I thought about me turning 50, my mom’s disease, this raging wildfire — things I could not change, no matter how hard I tried. And a weight lifted from my shoulders then, like unbuckling a heavy backpack after a very long day of steep hiking.
Sitting on the floor of the junk room, I closed my eyes and leaned against the bag of scarves, making peace with my loss of control — accepting that my cabin may have already burned to the ground.
And when I pictured my cabin gone, I realized something else.
My long-held dream wasn’t necessarily this exact cabin, not the structure itself. It was the idea of my writer’s cabin...of holding a physical and mental space for my creative life.
That was the dream.
And knowing I would carry that with me, wherever I go, brought me back to the serenity I had found on the trail.
(music fades out)
After 10 weeks of living in my mom’s basement, the evacuation was lifted in late October. My cabin had survived.
As I packed my things, Mom hovered anxiously.
“Wait, have I given you a scarf yet?” she asked, her eyes eagerly searching my face.
“No, not yet,” I replied truthfully. I walked with Mom upstairs to see her latest creation, knitted from a cool and calming blue yarn.
“This color,” she said, wrapping the scarf around my neck, “is called Glacier Bay.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I said, reaching for a hug. “Thank you for everything.”
(folksy music begins to play)
I pulled out of her driveway with my dog and two cats, and the final load of belongings in the back of my car.
One black trash bag carried my clothes.The other held 70 scarves — one for every day I had been evacuated.
I gave the bag of scarves an extra squeeze of appreciation before closing the hatch. I’d drop it off at the homeless shelter on my way out of town.
(music fades out)
By the time the Cameron Peak Fire was contained on December 2nd, it had consumed nearly 209,000 acres over 112 days, making it the largest and longest-lasting wildfire in Colorado history.
Today, my cabin stands in a green oasis of healthy ponderosa pines, surrounded on three sides by burn scar.
I know that, living in my cabin, there’s always a chance disaster can strike again.
Wildfire season keeps getting longer, the fires keep getting bigger, growing faster. And for some western states, fire season is 365 days a year.
But the words of my dad’s plaque keep me centered.
(relaxed music begins to play)
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
We all have our wildfires. And floods and hurricanes and heat domes and illnesses, and whatever else life throws our way.
We have our dreams. We take calculated risks. And sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
But grant me the courage to change the things I can.
If I choose to live in wildfire country, then I have a responsibility to mitigate the risk — to change the things I can where I live.
I keep a defensible perimeter around my cabin. Clear out dead trees and debris with other local volunteers. I’m part of a university research study to improve public communications during natural disasters. And right now, my neighbors and I monitor the small creek out back that feeds into the river. It’s the end of flash-flood season, here in the canyon.
Sometimes change is hard, even when things seem within our control.
Last year, I had planned to finish writing my first book, chink the logs of my cabin, and lose 10 pounds. I did none of these things.
But I did find the courage to go on a long walk through the mountains, survive a massive wildfire, and navigate my mom’s Alzheimer’s the best I could.
Fifty’s not so bad; I’m settling into it. It’s really not the disaster I thought it would be.
If there’s one thing my birthday year taught me, it’s that I have nothing to prove — to myself or anyone. And I learned there is strength in being gentle to ourselves, especially when things get tough.
There’s the plan, and then there’s life. God, grant me the wisdom to know the difference.
WILLOW: That was Becky Jensen. She’s a writer living in northern Colorado. You can see more of her work at beckyjensenwrites.com.
Becky has been on Out There multiple times before. So if you enjoyed this story, check out some of her other episodes. I have links to them in the show notes.
Thank you to Tanya Chawla for production assistance on this story. Tanya also provided editorial input, along with Melat Amha.
(music fades out and then more upbeat music begins to play)
Before you go, I want to remind you about our referral program, where you can earn rewards for sharing Out There with your friends.
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(music fades out)
Support for Out There comes from Epic Water Filters. Epic Water Filters is on a mission to get people to use fewer disposable plastic bottles. So they’ve created a whole line of water filters that fit into Nalgenes, Hydro Flasks, and other reusable water bottles. That way, you can have clean, filtered water wherever you go.
(sound of tap water running)
They sent me a couple of their filters to try out.
(tap water turns off, and you hear the sound of a water bottle lid being screwed on, the the sound of sipping)
It’s pretty nice. Water tastes good. Simple and easy. I think this is going to be especially great for road trips. You know, when you like stop and you want to fill your water bottle at gas stations and stuff, and the water always tastes terrible there? This is going to be awesome for that.
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(Out There theme music begins to play)
If you’re new to Out There, check out the “Best of Out There” playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time — and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find “Best of Out There” on Spotify, and at our website outtherepodcast.com.
That’s it for this episode. Our advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our interns are Melat Amha and Tanya Chawla. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
We’ll see you in two weeks.
(theme music ends on a last whistling note)
