The family whose house we evacuated to was in Oceanside, maybe a little less than a half hour west of Escondido. We were four packed vehicles, and it was a fairly grand house indeed to put up the lot of us. We entered the property through a gate, and I never did find out what business the family was in, but the property itself was a fruit orchard of various kinds, including pumellos and sweet limon.

I guess you could say it was a bit exciting, the whole scenario being out of the ordinary for the monastics. It sure wasn't what I bargained for. But it was after 10:00 and we quickly staked our pieces of carpeted floor in various rooms, waited to brush our teeth, and then it was lights out.

The next morning we woke up and . . . no, how about this: The next morning our hosts woke up to a houseful of monks, variously drinking tea, eating breakfast, reading, walking, sitting, playing foosball, whatever, their house was full of monks. What do you do when you wake up to a house full of monks? It boggles the mind.

Some of those monks were killer foosball players, you'd never guess.

But as it went, several hours of hanging around went by without any idea what to do, and the decision was made to return to the monastery! Why did we even leave?! But as long as we were down the mountain, they asked me if I could drive them to run some errands, picking up orders of supplies in Escondido. I was glad to, anything to not caravan anymore, so my car was the first to head back to Escondido.

Escondido was a sight, maybe the burned out pick-up on the freeway on the way back was portent, but Escondido looked post-apocalyptic. Everywhere was just an eerie orange haze. Before today, the skies were clear and blue except for the plumes of smoke, billowing and dissipating into the sky. This was something else. And it didn't get any better at the monastery. Needless to say, normal functioning wasn't going to happen any time soon. Needless to say, we should have stopped for burritos while we were in town as we were considering. At least I was able to get a cup of coffee.

In the afternoon, a group of us drove up the mountain to assess the situation. This time there were no nuns chanting and we were able to get to a rocky overlook at 2000'. There were some nuns already there, hanging out, and no fire in sight, just haze in all directions. The folks I came up with kinda went off, and while I was sitting on the rock, the nuns started chanting. It was pretty mesmerizing. It was great. Intense. That was an intense 20 minutes that I sat there with my eyes closed, listening to the nuns chanting.

When we got back down, someone asked me how it looked. I joked that it looked great, the fires were all gone, and predicted that tomorrow would be clear as a bell. And it was.

In the evening, I sat on my own in the Meditation Hall.