The Kincade Fire had been burning for a couple of days and the National Weather Service alerted us that 70 mph winds were on the way. I live in Santa Rosa, California, and my home was becoming surrounded by mandatory evacuation zones. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced they were cutting power in more areas, too. Homes and businesses were starting to burn. As my wife and I talked about evacuation, I started thinking about my books.
My book collection as it stands today is … I like to think of it as a carefully curated distillation of the mighty thing it once was. As a museum curator, my career has taken me on big moves a few times, to the point that today I own maybe a modest few hundred books as opposed to the several thousand I’ve owned over the course of my entire life. But even a few hundred books is a lot of books. My wife’s collection is about the same size, likely giving us around a thousand books or so between us. Though we’ve been together for about five years now, we only just started shelving our books commingled together recently. These things take time, right?
The fire was about 15 miles away but was growing and growing, expected to become larger than the devastating Tubbs Fire of 2017 that burned thousands of homes in our city and though we weren’t here for it, everyone we know was. The whole city gets anxious when there’s smoke in the air. At our house, when our power goes out, we lose cell service, mobile data, pretty much everything but the battery-powered radio. So, instead of sitting at home and listening to the wind rattle our house, smelling smoke and wondering if it was getting closer and waiting for the police sirens to tell us to evacuate immediately … we took off ahead of being told to.
But what to take? We packed light, a few days worth of clothes and both of our handwritten journals (many years worth for both of us) and a couple of boxes of photographs. We each grabbed a couple of books, mostly to read while we were away, fairly confident we’d be home soon. I took a few quick videos on my phone of our bookshelves, just in case, and we left.
In fact, though we were under no direct threat from the fire after we arrived at our hotel a couple of hours away, it was funny what did grab after we took stock. I only took two shirts. The one I was wearing and another, which apparently had some gum in the pocket when it went through the laundry and now sported a big ugly blotch on the chest, which I hadn’t noticed grabbing it out of the dryer. I also brought no other shoes than what I had on. We also brought enough LEGOs to rebuild a temporary home should the need arise.
While we were away I couldn’t help thinking about the books I left behind. Not merely particular titles, but *my* copies. My copies of Walden — the copy that turned me into a bibliophile, my second edition, my collection of the Sherlock Holmes stories, P. G. Wodehouse, the Saga of Hugh Glass my grandfather gave me to prove he was right and I was wrong, gifts from my wife. What about the pieces of wonderful ephemera that I’m sure I own the sole copies? I couldn’t think about it too much without getting a terrible feeling. I had other things I needed to be thinking about.
Coming Home
After five days of being almost constantly on the move, a neighbor said the power was coming back on. We decided to head for home. Fortunately (?) we’d have two previous multi-day power outages, so we didn’t have a lot of food on hand to spoil in the refrigerator or deep-freeze. We had buttoned up the house pretty tight, so there wasn’t much smoke or ash to deal with either, though I think next time I’m going to tape the gaps in the back doors, which I should have thought of. Due to the winds, we did lose a couple of our sad patio chair cushions. All-in-all, we got off extremely easy compared to some of our neighbors.
Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles
We unloaded the car and I went straight to my shelves, thankful. What did I read when I came home? I leaped at my copies of William Targ’s Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles and Unpacking my Library by Leah Price. I had only recently rediscovered my copy of Targ’s Bouillabaisse after it had been in storage for a while, and I had reluctantly assumed I’d given it away. It’s exactly what you’d expect. A hearty stew of choice morsels simmered together to what really amounts to bookworm comfort food. My copy is special to me. It’s not special in any intrinsic way. I’ve had it for many years (and moves) now, buying it at the public library used book sale while I was in grad school in Texas. I remember reading it then and how wonderful it was as a balm to my bibliophilic soul at a time when my reading was guided by coursework. It’s an anthology of all kinds of book-related stories. Stories from writers, the great collectors, librarians, publishers, just about anyone associated with books (up to the late 1940s when it was published).
Leah Price’s Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books isn’t so much a special copy, but one that I knew would be a comfort. Stories from writers who range from ardent bibliophiles to others who just understand that books are useful tools without getting too sentimental about them. Several of them shared stories I found comforting. Stories of loss and starting over, and renewal, but also the power of books.
In the End, It’s Just Stuff
Going through the evacuation did not help me decide what I should take should there be a next time. Do I take the precious stuff? The sentimental stuff? The unique stuff? The valuable stuff? It’s hard to say.
Don’t get me wrong, I would be *devastated* to lose my home library. But what do you grab in a fire? I’m still not sure which books I should take with me when we evacuate for a wildfire, but I do know this: I would drop it all for my kid’s favorite hat, the family portrait drawn by a caricaturist, or anything else to bring my loved ones comfort as we sit and wait in terrible anticipation.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.