My second day at the monastery began with the end of Daylight Savings time, and I still failed to wake up at the morning bell, not an easy task, mind you, as it sounds for a good 30 minutes, albeit at 5:00 in the morning. We had the extra hour which I used up last night reading in the Tea Room, rather than getting an extra hour of sleep. I took an extra hour of sleep by waking up late, and was late for the first Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, which was videotaped in the root monastery in Plum Village, France, and sent here.
I hurriedly zipped on my pant sleeves, put on some socks, and stepped outside, and *whoa*, it was balmy, the air smelled like burning, and the world was bathed in an orange hue. Strange climate, this San Diego, I thought.
I found out after the Dharma Talk that this wasn't normal San Diego weather, but there was a wildfire raging over the mountain ridge that lined the eastern valley wall. Those clouds rising over the ridge were plumes of smoke. So much for serenity and simplicity.
At 9:00, a monk announced that the regular Sunday "Day of Mindfulness", which involves interested lay practitioners coming up from the Escondido community and spending the day, would be cancelled because of the fire, and that the monastery would be evacuated at 10:00. This was my first lesson that something stated at the monastery isn't exactly written in stone.
Come 11:00, there was no movement towards evacuating, and although ash was falling, the smoke didn't look too bad, and we began the second Dharma Talk video. After lunch, the real vacillating began. I suppose the monks were trying to reach consensus on whether to evacuate or not; some being fearful and really wanting to, others not feeling the danger and not wanting to abandon the monastery.
If it came to evacuating, there were numerous Vietnamese families in Escondido who would have been honored to have monks stay at their homes, but another objection to evacuation was splitting up the Sangha (a Buddhist practicing community).
If it came to evacuating, I personally didn't feel comfortable going to a lay practitioner's home. It was one thing for the monks to invite me to stay with them at the monastery, but it was a different thing to stay at a civilian's home that welcomed monks, and probably would have welcomed anyone practicing with the monks, but without that clearly stated, I didn't want to assume it or even inquire about it. Considerate bastard, ain't I?
So I was ready to leave if it came to evacuation, but until then, I stayed and waited in case the monks needed my car to transport them somewhere. Also because I only wanted to leave as a last resort. The afternoon went on and it looked like they were evacuating, and eventually about 2/3 of the Sangha did leave. I stayed and waited to see if they would call up my car for use.
The monks that didn't leave, I think were ones that adamantly didn't want to leave, and they curiously broke out a garden picnic. We had tea and munchies and a guitar and flutes also came out. Some Vietnamese lay practitioners were there, and some nuns showed up from the nun's hamlet (Clarity Hamlet, the monks hamlet is Solidity Hamlet), and we just
At one point, I was walking outside the garden, which was close to the parking lot, and one of the monks, Brother Un*, came up to me and asked if we could take my car to go up the mountain to see how close the fire was. That sounded exciting, so I agreed. In addition, three wise-cracking nuns and the other week guest piled into my car and we drove up a dirt mountain road. After parking, we still had to hike a bit to the vantage point where we could see the fire, but halfway there, we ran into a group of nuns who were chanting, perhaps praying for the fire to stop, and we couldn't get past them because we didn't want to interrupt or disturb them. So we didn't see the fire, just a lot of smoke which wasn't too discernible in the fading twilight.
While we were up there, another group came up telling us that a sheriff had come by and the evacuation was now mandatory. We headed back down the mountain, but towards the bottom we ran into a fire marshall who said that we probably didn't have to leave yet, but wanted an estimate on how many of us were left, and also advised us to stick together and the best place to be was at Solidity Hamlet, which was higher up and had a clearer view of the ridge than Clarity. From the road at the gate of the monastery, we could also see the glow of the San Diego fire to the south, which wasn't threatening us, but now I understand that these fires were national news. We didn't get news media at the monastery, so we didn't know how big or how bad things were. We just heard there were four big wildfires raging, and one was looming over us.
But there was movement to evacuate already based on the sheriff, and directions were passed out for a meeting point in Escondido where the people who left already were. Maybe families who volunteered to take monks in would pick them up at that meeting point, I don't know how it works. It didn't look like my car was needed, so I thought I would drive with them to the meeting point, and when it was clear I wasn't needed, I would take off for San Francisco from there.
We drove the eighth of a mile to Clarity Hamlet and stopped to see how the nuns were getting along with evacuating, and after a half an hour hanging out there, eating instant noodles, it turned out the nuns weren't evacuating, and the remaining monks also decided not to evacuate and we headed back up to Solidity Hamlet.
They decided to set up a watch over the fire. Four of us took two hour shifts through the night to watch the eastern ridge. With the sun gone down, we could see the glow of the fire on the other side, and if flames reached the ridge, we would evacuate. I took the 2:00-4:00 shift.
It was fascinating watching the glow over the ridge which would shift from one point to another. It was a gorgeous, warm, Summer-like night, and the sky was clear aside from the smoke of the fire, and I passed time by stargazing with my binoculars. I think I saw Saturn in Gemini, but I will have to consult with a magazine to confirm if it was. I thought I saw what looked like rings, but at highest zoom, it's pretty impossible to hold my binos steady enough to be sure.
