December 4, 2017 is a day I will never forget. It's when California's largest wildfire (the Mendocino fire is technically two fires combined, yet is considered the biggest) broke out. I was at home, only five miles from the ignition point of the fire when I got a call from a friend asking if I could see the flames from my house.

"Flames?" I asked her.

"Yeah, my dad just let me know that there's one that started in Santa Paula. Are you guys okay?"

In less than two hours of talking to her, the power went out, the flames had spread across five miles, and my living room was full of our lives. My parents and I huddled together at 2:00 a.m. wrapped in blankets listening to the fire department scanner that informed us of the danger only a couple of blocks behind our house. Those first 11 hours of the scanner that I listened to in my dark living room can be heard here.

The Thomas fire was finally 100% contained a month later, but effects from this blaze lasted much longer. School was out for two weeks before we went into winter break, but no one was excited for the extra time off. A white Christmas is impossible in Southern California, but with ashes landing down upon the cars and beginning to layer the roofs of houses, it felt like a sick white Christmas that we experienced that December morning.

I personally know the firefighters who pulled citizens into fire trucks with the flames licking the side of the engine and sent them through tunnels of flames to safety. I've heard the stories of embers blowing through millimeter gaps in open windows and have them catch papers on fire. I remember the dread I felt when I saw the last name WREESMAN pop up on the T.V. screen when they showed my cousin with a fire hose in his hand, fighting with fellow firefighters to put out the blaze that threatened hundreds of thousands of people. I remember every call my dad made to help get crews to the fires and every call to help with broken engines from out of state in the mechanic's shop. I remember how upset he was that he couldn't go to work to help one on one because our house was still threatened.

I can clearly picture the look in my dad's eyes when he found out from the chief that a firefighter had died in the fire and how we prayed that it wasn't my cousin.

Everyone knows that fires are devastating, whether they're natural and a part of the life cycle, or when they're raging through cities and disrupting life. The pictures of them are undeniably beautiful unless it's your house that is in the foreground. It's impossible to look past the blurriness of your school, your streets, and your home when 100-foot flames burn in the background. It's impossible to not frown when the ash is still stuck in the grooves of your car and the cracks in your driveway. It's impossible not to panic when a building groans, even for a second, or when the wind whips through the air because the last time I felt winds such as those there were embers soaring and flames racing down the hills.

So to everyone that feels wonder when looking at pictures of wildfires; I feel the same way. Wonder and awe from the power that nature has, but I also have a tinge of fear and an icy shudder of anxiety because I don't need a picture to be in awe of a wildfire.

Even though it happened a mere 9 months ago, I will always have clear memories and anxieties from the Thomas Fire.