The fire was for us all a powerful and transformational experience.
Here you can see them knocking the chimney down of our home that burnt in the Californian wildfires. We had around 20 minutes to get the animals into the car, grab a few things and leave. The winds were swirling and sometimes going horizontal at 70 or 80 miles an hour. What your seeing is our living room. The fire burnt at about 1800 degrees.
It was amazing to see the over 200' wall of fire smoke and ash coming towards us as we left with most others on our street. Horses and a donkey were being led up the street to a rescue area at the school. Floats were pouring up the hill to help rescue animals as we were going down.
We heard at about 5am that our house was gone. The only area that survived was our meditation area. There all of the trees and plants survived.
Going up the coast and then to LA we went, until just before Xmas when we moved to the house across the street, which Heather had offered for us to rent. The community came with food and gifts. I don't think we had to cook for a week!
It's not always been easy, we decided not to speak about what we lost. Although every so often we'd think oh no, I lost 25 years of Qi Gong notes....or all of our mementos.
We have had a several miracles happening. Bob lost both his pianos, which was heartbreaking for him. One day we went to the HELp of Ojai Fire relief store....where we can take anything that people have donated....and there was a piano all covered in stuff. He played it, it had a good sound and we asked if we could take it. Jayne at first thought no and then she said "Yes." So I called our piano tuner and his son gave us a movers name. He was going to charge us 200, the next morning the piano tuner called to say that he was moving it for free himself. It arrived two hours after the pieces of the burnt piano were loaded onto the dump truck. It's a beautiful piano and he loves it. We've had several amazing things happen like this.
We also realized that many of the things we have been affirming have happened because of the fire. We still have moments where it's harder, but we've created places for our meditation and almost never miss our affirmations together.
Through the ashes are rising little growing things and everything seems to be breathing better. We all seem to be coming back into balance more and so thankful for all the help and love we've been given.
After the clean up...tons of ash and rubble removed....new beginnings
Our home....
