Finding Calm in the Chaos of Wildfire Season

Two weeks ago, a wildfire burned out of control through the city where I live in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

We had just left on a family camping trip to Cultus Lake, which is near Chilliwack on the outskirts of the Lower Mainland of Vancouver.

As we left town, the smoke was getting very thick from a wildfire that had been burning across our lake in our neighbouring city of West Kelowna. It seemed like a perfect time to be getting away on our trip and getting a break from the smoke.

That evening around 10:30pm my husband and I were turning off our campfire (the last few years a campfire ban has been in place to prevent forest fires and so we are using a propane fire pit that needs to be turned off, rather than put out), when my phone rang.

It was brother calling to say that he was being evacuated and was wondering if he could stay our house. He said there was a windstorm and a new fire had started across the lake where we live in Kelowna. He said people were saying that the wind storm had blown an ember across Okanagan Lake (which is 5km or 3 miles wide), starting a new fire near the center of town.

I texted him the front door code to stay at our house and then we got ready for bed.

As I lay there in my sleeping bag, I could hear the wind howling. I was a three hours’ drive away from Kelowna but I knew that the howling wind was a bad sign.

I laid there awake for quite some time, worrying about what was happening back home.

The next morning I woke up and checked our local news site. It was blowing up with all the new evacuation orders in place and news of the destruction from the fire throughout the night. The windstorm had hurricane-force winds that pulled trees from their roots and grew the fire much larger throughout multiple cities in the surrounding area.

Suddenly there were fires in West Kelowna, multiple fires in Kelowna, and fires in Westbank and Lake County, our other neighbouring communities.

We had planned to spend the day at the Adventure Park in Cultus Lake, which is a small amusement park with roller coasters, bumper boats, mini golf, and other fun rides for adults and kids. I tried not to worry too much about Kelowna and we headed out for the day.

As I was on the roller coaster, my phone rang. It was my mom calling saying that she wanted to get out of town because everyone was leaving.

She also lived central in the middle of town as we did, but even the people living in Central Kelowna, away from the forests, were feeling unsafe because of how quickly the wind was moving the fire.

In between roller coaster rides I spoke to my mom and brother on speaker phone, who were panicking and trying to figure out how to leave town quickly.

They said there were long line ups at the gas stations and some gas stations were running out of gas as many people tried to leave.

My mom had been feeding out two indoor cats while we were away and we needed to make a plan for them if she was going to leave town.

Now my mom has always been the rock of our family. Hearing her sounding so stressed and as if she was fighting the urge to breakdown and cry scared me.

I contacted my cat sitter who has helped me before to see if she was available. She told me that she too was about to leave town along with everyone else.

It was at that point my mom asked me what she could grab from our house for us that we didn’t want to burn. So, she ran to our house, grabbed our birth certificates and two cats, hopped in the car, and started driving to meet us in Cultus Lake.

My mom arrived at our camp site three hours later with a sleeping bag, air mattress, and pillow, and stayed in our tent with us for two nights while everything settled down.

The cats arrived and stayed in a crate within their own tent, which worked quite well considering they were indoor cats! If you know cats, they are not an ideal camping companion. ??

During this whole time I was feeling very anxious. I woke up with a tension headache as the muscles in my neck and shoulders were so tight. My heart rate was up, and my thoughts were racing.

As I professionally help others drop out of anxious, stressful and worrisome thinking, I tried all my tools to try and calm myself down.

But nothing was working.

I couldn’t relax my muscles to make my headache go away.

I couldn’t slow my increased heart rate.

And I couldn’t stop my worrisome thoughts.

But I also knew that I was in the thick of it. It was a stressful situation all around.

And so I decided to treat the experience as an experiment.

Even in the middle of a crisis, would it still be possible to tap into my True Nature, the part inside of me that’s always calm, content, and peaceful?

Because if the hypothesis is true that that space always exists inside of me, regardless of any external circumstances, it would make sense that even during a crisis I would still be able to access it.

I paused.

I took a few deep breaths.

I let go of all my thinking in that moment.

And then a wave of calm, peace, and serenity washed over every inch of my body.

And then after about one minute –

It was gone.

My thinking came back in.

But I was okay with my thinking and stress being there.

I knew I was in an extraordinary situation that was pulling my focus in a million different directions.

But amidst it all, I could still experience a glimpse of my peaceful center, which proved my hypothesis and experiment to be true.

Over the next week as the situation started to settle down after unfortunately 195 homes and structures were burned. Luckily my brother’s house was still standing.

Once the fire was classified as held we returned home to Kelowna.

When we were home, the anxiety, tension, and worry I was experiencing started to dissipate on its own.

There were still days that something would happen to trigger me feeling anxious again, such as the wind starting to blow. But over time it became easier and easier again to access that calm, content, and peaceful center and spend more and more time there again.

Thanks to everyone who reached out to me in August while this was happening. I appreciate it!

Have a great week,

Tracey