Where there's smoke

A few weeks ago, two friends and I took our cars and our dogs to my family's cabin for a weekend of relaxing (us) and insane playing and fetching (the dogs). Early that Saturday morning, while one friend slept in peaceful oblivion to impending danger, the other friend and I set out with our dogs for a long walk around the property, which it should be said is a small island off the Colorado river, accessible by cable car. No bridge, no means of, say for instance, any emergency vehicle reaching any emergency while said emergency could be considered current.

It was cold that morning, the first temperature drop of the season. After being outside about five seconds, I ran back into the house, up the stairs and into one of the guest rooms to grab a sweatshirt from the closet shelf where I keep all my sweatshirts and sweaters. I turned the closet light on, grabbed the sweatshirt, shut the closet door and we were on our way.

If you raised an eyebrow at a missing step there, you're onto something.

At one point on our walk, my friend asked if we could let the dogs swim. Not wanting to have two cold and wet dogs to deal with when we got back to the cabin, I gave her a look that needed no words for clarification. One that clearly said, hell no.

Sort of a save the day response, that.

When we returned to the house, I smelled something, something yummy. But ever so quickly, my brain jumped from the oh-so-pleasant thought of Mmmmm, someone is roasting marshmallows to the terrifying realization that no one roasts marshmallows at 8:00 in the morning, that something was BURNING.

I glanced upward to discover several streams of smoke coming from where the side of the house meets the eave of the roof. Stating with a bizarre calmness to my friend that something was on fire, I ran inside the house to get the fire extinguisher and investigate. Trouble was, the extinguisher was extinguished. And I couldn't find the source of smoke. Neither could she. We yelled across the house to each other and we were both empty-handed. It wasn't on the third floor, or in the attic, or on the second floor. Racing through my head were the desperatre words, Where in the hell is it?

Brilliantly, I called a neighbor to tell him that I thought our house was on fire and was unsure what to do other than to call someone and make it their problem because I was clearly not dealing with it very well on my own.

And, conveniently, and sort of medicinally, I thought, At least the phone works.

Back upstairs again, I opened the door to the guest room and discovered thick smoke. Then I began to act out every single thing you are not supposed to do in the event of a fire. 1) Walk upright through the smoke and breathe deep and through your mouth. 3) Open a door that is hot (in this case, the closet door) - suggesting that fire is on the other side of that door, and 4) Feed the fire by giving it oxygen (in this case, opening the window to let the smoke out and allow the fire-feeding oxygen in).

I found it! I yelled, gasped and coughed as I ran outside for smokeless air, and the now on-the-scene island caregiver heroically ran inside. Almost immediately, an airborne handfull of flaming sweaters and sweatshirts followed an airborne window screen he'd knocked from the open window. Then another handfull. And there in a small and pitiful heap was half the problem that, thanks to my sweatshirt-grabbing carelessness, had connected with the other half of the problem: the lit bulb that I did not turn off.

I looked at my sweater, now nothing more than a pile of wet soot, and at the house I've spent so many good times in, time shared with my family, time shared with my friends, time shared with my father. I looked at that house which my parents built together. And prayers of gratitude poured from my heart that we caught the danger in time, before it became an emergency that could not be answered.

As we stood around in a circle shaking our heads and thanking our luck, my friend looked at me bug-eyed and said, We forgot to wake up Chris! Who, let it be said, was never in any danger whatsoever because she was in a separate house entirely, connected only by a walkway.

But still.