WE ARE SLV
I should probably write this down. I may never capture this moment again because depending on what happens over the next few days the way I view this moment may be hugely different. I need to tell you what it feels like to be inside the fire.
Not literally.
We are safely evacuated and watching in horror, as our hometown burns. But our hearts, our hearts are in this fire.
I moved to the San Lorenzo Valley 15 years ago. My husband has been there more than 20. We raised our two daughters there — one now a senior in college and watching with despair and impotence from another state, the other a junior in high school ,watching as the school buildings she has not entered since last March lay in the path of the flames.
I don’t think there’s a single place like our Valley in the Bay Area.
In our Valley, we have a sign at the corner of Highway 9 and Graham Hill Road where community members post tributes, encouragement, and art in support of one another. It’s not commercial. It’s just love. For months that little billboard was a message of love for a young Valley man who died in a traffic accident at that corner. Then it became a place where community members put up inspirational art to lift each other’s spirits when the Covid-19 pandemic began.
In our Valley, blue collar workers, tech industry engineers, artists, equestrians, police officers and firefighters, and so many others live side by side. We haven’t segregated ourselves by income level. It’s still a place where the children of house painters and tech industry executives can play together on the same soccer team.
In our Valley, we have all volunteer fire departments made up mostly of the same men and women who grew up in our here - many who started volunteering as high school fire interns - loved it and stayed. We have people like my brother-in-law - a retired firefighter who stayed on as a volunteer at our local department and his son, now 23, who started as one of those fire interns. Together with the thousands of other men and women, many local, they are on the front lines fighting to save our homes.
Because that is what we do in our Valley.
At the corner of Highway 9 and Glen Arbor Rd just before Highlands Park, you’ll see a big sign memorializing Santa Cruz County Sheriff Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, who was killed in the line of duty a couple of months ago.
The pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests were already in full swing when the report of a suspicious vehicle carrying weapons came in. The Deputy Sheriff was ambushed and killed by an active duty Air Force member who was affiliated with a racist militia group. It was a painful thing to go through as a Valley because we were a people divided. Everyone was horrified by the Sergeant’s murder, but it came during a time of racial tension and calls of police brutality.
But divided is not our natural state. San Lorenzo Valley — #SLVSTRONG — is a community. We know how to come together.
So, for now, I’m going to picture stopping in the right-hand turn lane at the corner of Graham Hill and Highway 9, looking left and right, then up that beautiful Felton Empire Grade Rd. I’ll make the right-hand turn and see the sign that says “Together We Arise” just past Cornerstone. I’ll pass the high school, middle school, and elementary school “Tri-Campus,” where our kids spent their childhood, and I’ll try to read the school’s announcement sign out front. I’ll look up El Soyo Heights road, because it’s where my brother-in-law and his family live and I think of them each time I drive by. I’ll pass Sergeant Gutzwiller’s memorial at the Glen Arbor bridge.
Then I’ll pull close to the yellow dividing line and turn left up our road. The Luckows will be working in their front garden. I’ll wave to a neighbor as I pass them because that’s what we do.
And we’ll be home.
