Beauty amid the Ashes

A couple retired to Oregon only to have their woodland go up in flames. But they have no time for regrets. There’s a forest to replant.

written by ELIZABETH GROENING

captured by GRACE HEFLEY

On the first Sunday of last September, the sun shone brightly in Vida, Oregon. The quaint community, nestled along Lane County’s McKenzie River about 30 miles northeast of Eugene, is home to approximately 1,000 people. The warm weather begged Theresa Hausser, 56, and her wife, Kate McMichael, 60, to take the afternoon off. After a year spent digging and chopping on their 39-acre woodland, the couple’s hard work was starting to pay off. They hadn’t yet gotten to live among their thousands of Douglas firs up on North Gate Creek Road. However, there was a freshly dug hole in the dirt, waiting for the women’s retirement home to be built.

“We fell in love with this property because we want- ed to grow more things. It was too beautiful to say no,” said McMichael, a retired schoolteacher. She and Hausser purchased the Vida property in 2019, eager to

leave the Bay Area. Their shared anxiety of California’s 12-month fire season overrode the fact that they knew little about forestry.

Giving into the sunshine’s pleas, the two gray-haired women dozed off in their camper beneath a canopy of trees. That afternoon was the first three hours they’d ever spent enjoying the forest that had brought them to the Pacific Northwest.

It would also be their last.

OUT OF THE BLUE

Around 6:30 p.m. the next evening, Hausser and Mc- Michael sensed the early warning signs of the dangerous element they’d both experienced too many times before. They were sitting outside of their rental home in Springfield — about 25 miles southwest from their Vida land — when the sun slipped behind particles of smoke, shifting the sky’s mood from blue to orange and gray. The wind that suddenly hit their cheeks caused Hausser to recall being 6 years old in 1970, when a similar bluster forced her family to evacuate their Southern California home at 2 a.m. Although she was now far from Simi Valley, she panicked, unable to escape visions of fireballs blowing through the front door of her childhood home.

The gusts had a similar effect on McMichael, who grew up in the sagebrush desert of Boise, Idaho, with no fire protection. In present day, she mimicked her adolescent bedtime ritual of mentally cataloging what she’d grab just in case. Even today, her list includes her stuffed panther and a handful of books.

The sky’s shade of apocalyptic gray kicked the women’s stress into high gear. Swapping the drinks they’d been sip- ping for their cellphones, they placed urgent calls to their neighbors up on North Gate Creek Road. The six other families who lived near their Vida woodland were also noticing an unusual amount of smoke, but believed it was blowing in from other active fires in Oregon.

Hausser and McMichael didn’t need a notification to know that what had tormented them separately as children and what had chased them out of California only a year before was catching up with them. They felt this fire in their bones and knew it was coming fast.

TREES TO ASHES

By 8 a.m. the next morning, the once-luscious forests of Vida resembled burnt match sticks. Overnight, the women’s lofty green woodland had dissolved into brown dust and smoky black stumps.

Those 2020 Labor Day winds rapidly fueled a blaze — to be tagged the Holiday Farm Fire — with a mind of its own. Wylda Cafferata, a friend of Hausser and McMichael and secretary for Lane County’s Small Woodland Association, described the fire as an unstoppable “perfect storm of dry weather and east winds.”

One of the couple’s neighbors, Ricky Smith, 63, received an alert around 1 a.m. that warned him that the fire was at a Level 3 evacuation and that he needed to take nothing and get out. All of the North Gate Creek Road neighbors received this notification, except for Hausser and McMichael because they didn’t have an occupancy permit on the land yet. Smith ignored the alert. At the time, he thought it was irrational to think that a fire was coming down the McKenzie River Val- ley. Nonetheless, by 2:30 a.m., strong winds, eerie black ash in the air and panicked phone calls from family and neighbors finally convinced Smith and his wife to head down the hill.

“I’ve seen the wildfires in California and have felt horrible for what those people have gone through,” said Smith, who’s lived in Vida his entire life. “But to experience it in an area where I thought nothing like that could ever happen — it’s heart-wrenching. I just praise the Lord every day that He got us through it.”

The flames originated from a downed power line on the banks of the McKenzie, near milepost 47 on Oregon 126. Within 24 hours, they expanded over 100,000 acres, about four times the size of Eugene. All in all, the fire torched about 173,300 acres along the river. However, the Holiday Farm Fire wasn’t the only one to spread through the state in the fall of 2020. Altogether, the season’s fires burned approximately 1.07 million acres of Oregon’s forestland, scorching 4,009 homes and an estimated 300 million trees.

Five months after the fire, Hausser admitted that turning onto North Gate Creek Road still feels like a gut punch. She said, “We have moments of crushing despair, and then, ‘Oh, this isn’t that bad,’ to more crushing despair.” The fire transformed Oregon 126 from a scenic drive through Oregon’s greenery to a hazardous-looking war zone filled with fallen trees.

ROOTED IN THE LAND

There was nothing tangible tying Hausser and McMichael to their Vida woodland post-fire.

Although many of their trees still stood tall, most were dead. But knowing that they still had each other and their land was enough to make them stay.

“The forest we fell in love with is gone. It’s just gone,” Mc- Michael said. “But this little woodland that we know and love is still there, and so we’re going to stay with it because it’s a relationship we’ve forged and a responsibility we’ve taken on.”

Miraculously, their soil and the hole for their unbuilt home survived. The couple has worked closely with conservation specialist Lily Leitermann from Upper Willamette Soil & Water Conservation. This agency works with landowners to make sure their water is clean, their soil is productive and their wildlife habitat is healthy. From her observations of the property, Leitermann said the rapid spread of the Holiday Farm Fire did not allow it to deeply damage the couple’s soil. In fact, it left their ground in solid shape for replantation due to the lack of vegetation left on the surface.

“Both humans and nature are resilient. Landscapes can go through changes, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end. Same with humans. We go through a traumatic event and we change, but we can learn from it. Theresa and Kate are being resilient so that their forest can be as well,” Leitermann said.

Mirroring their soil’s strength, Hausser and McMichael are moving forward and replanting, neither of which are simple tasks. In the midst of feeling heartbroken over their life- less trees, they’ve had to learn about reforestation. They’ve utilized resources, such as the Oregon Forest Resource Institute, Oregon State University’s Extension Fire Program and Women Owning Woodlands Network, by attending their virtual workshops.

“I often find myself starting to weep. We’re so grateful, but so sad,” McMichael said.

Their strong faith in Jewish beliefs is largely behind their decision to remain rooted in the land. Daily, the couple re- cites the Sh’ma — which McMichael describes as “a call to recognize the oneness of all that is.” By doing so, they remind themselves that they are co-creators, working together with God to heal the world. Their rituals help them stay grounded at a time when their thoughts are constantly clouded in pain.

ANTICIPATORY GRIEF

In the moments following the fire, the women’s thoughts and memories were blurred. To avoid confronting their grief, they stayed busy. For instance, they spent one day carving bowls out of salvaged wood for an Oregon Women in Timber auction, while the next they focused on what types of trees to replant. They have yet to sit down and process the fire and its life-altering effects.

“I can’t name a time we were especially sad, but I know how devastated we were to see that, indeed, our little hemlocks and the ‘three sisters,’ our three self-seeding Douglas Firs, hadn’t made it,” Hausser said.

One moment they remember clearly was the Day of the Dead, October 31, when they lit a bonfire on their Vida property and called out for the souls of their dead trees. Struck by how the skeletons of their trees still looked alive in the moonlight, Mc- Michael felt the urge to do something she’d never done before — write poetry:

“Resolve and hope amidst the burned husks of ancient stumps and twisted trees.”

The two women anticipate that the grief will hit them when they get to move into their Vida home, but they are comforted knowing that they’ll go through it hand in hand.

WOMEN OF THE WOODS

Hausser and McMichael’s hope to restore the land stems from knowing they’re not alone. Their neighbors and friends in the Oregon timber community have been there to share advice, kindness and a range of emotions. Together, Hausser said they’ve gone “from despair at how much worse it was than initially feared to enthusiasm for the possibility of more wood- land diversity.”

Before the fire, for instance, their neighbor Smith made space in his barn for the couple to store their UTV. This seemingly small act of kindness made a big difference, saving them from parking it on their homesite where it could have been damaged amid construction. Smith and other neighbors continue to teach Hausser and McMichael about forestry and what their next steps in the revitalization process should be.

“Through helping each other find trees to working together on rebuilding projects, the neighbors are getting closer,” said Smith, who’s gotten over 11,000 trees replanted on his land. “Theresa and Kate come up to work every day, even when it’s rainy and cold. They have such a love for their land, just like I do for mine, so we relate.”

By having support, McMichael said that their plans to “help their resilient forest actually come back” are achievable. In the early months of 2021, the pair had a salvage harvest, where hefty pieces of equipment logged hundreds of burnt trees to make room for new ones.

“And so, a wooded landscape becomes an empty landscape. We’re grateful we have a property at all. What we lost is less than what so many people have lost, but we didn’t buy this place to be utterly exposed,” Hausser said. After the har- vest, some dead trees remain in the ground, but there are many vast patches with nothing.

With the assistance of friends and neighbors, the women are obtaining a diverse range of seedlings, allowing them to cultivate an assorted forest from the ground up. For every- one who helps them along the way, whether it be a construction worker or a close friend, Hausser and McMichael bake them cookies to show their gratitude.

As of April, they had about 5,600 baby trees in the ground. While it takes them a full day of work to plant 50 trees on their own, it takes a professional crew merely 15 minutes. They were grateful to be gifted 175 trees — some ash, cottonwood and a box of Douglas fir plugs — that they planted themselves. In total, the pair has planted 600 with their own hands, as they’re trying to build an intimate connection with the thin baby trees. They anticipate that their first season of tree-planting will cost them over $8,500 out of their retirement savings.

Hausser and McMichael are facing an array of obstacles in their replanting process. They’re actively working to protect the little stems from deer and invasive blackberries. Meanwhile, if this spring ends up being too dry, there’s a chance their newly in-the-ground babies won’t make it and they’ll have to replant again. Although they’re exhaust- ed and stressed, they don’t regret buying their forest.

“We’re still doing [forestry], just differently now. It’s fun to be learning, creating a whole new world and taking on a whole new life together. We’ve enjoyed it, fire and all,” Mc- Michael said.

For them, the Holiday Farm Fire provided an opportunity to make a positive contribution to the planet, the health of the carbon cycle and future generations. Hausser and McMichael are aware that they’re aging and won’t be re- tiring among grown trees like they’d planned. But they do have fresh twigs in the ground that resemble hope.

Most of all, they have each other. Hausser knows when to hold McMichael, and when not to.

McMichael understands that Hausser needs her naps. With every seemingly daunting task, having each other is everything.

“Our women of the woods journey has only begun,” Hausser said.