Tuesday night, about 11:00 - 11:30, I was walking to the house from the office after shutting down the computer for the night. As I stepped up onto the porch I noticed a faint glow way down in the field east of the house, about 300 yards away.

OH SHIT!

I stood at the base of the bedroom steps and called up to Mark who had just gone to bed.... "I think our field is on fire."

Seth was still up so we hopped in the golf cart and went to check.

Yep. there is a fire.

I went back to the house for water, yelled at Levi to come help and we all shoveled sand in the dark and in the rain for almost two hours. It looked to be under control (the fire was down in a ravine but trying to spread up the banks and into the field)so, we all came to the house, took showers, and the guys went to bed. This was at 1:30.

I was too nervous about the fire to sleep so I stayed up and read. I made four trips back down to the fire shoveling sand, by myself, trying to keep the fire away from a dead cedar at the edge of the ravine. The last trip by myself was at 3:30 and by then I was so tired I felt like my body was collapsing. I knew I was beyond what I could do alone, so, I woke Mark up and he went with me. I made a couple of water runs. By the second run, I was starting to get sick I was so tired. My body said NO MORE. I climbed the steps to Seth room, woke him up, and sent him with the water back to his Dad.

My heart was racing, fluttering and I was throwing up sick. I couldn't even manage a shower so I changed out of my wet clothes and lay down on the sofa. I was up and down all night dry heaving and generally feeling as if I might seriously die.

I heard Seth come in about daylight. Mark didn't come in for a couple of more hours and the fire still wasn't out, contained but not out.

We all slept until almost noon on Wednesday when Mark had to get ready to go out on a job.

One more trip to the fire to make sure it was burning safely revealed that NO it was NOT... it had flared back up and was threatening trees at the far end of the ravine.
He woke Seth up and they went back to fighting it, again.

Mark had to leave by two o'clock so he left it with Seth, Levi, and I. I was still so sick and weak I wasn't much help. We decided our only defense was to find enough water hoses to stretch almost 1000 feet. We gathered up all of ours, we went up and took all of my brothers, we called our neighbor and he brought hoses. Finally, we made it. The boys began hosing it down while I went home, took a shower and collapsed.

It had been drizzling rain the whole time we were working, but, the fire was up under a canopy of trees and not getting enough rain to put it out. As if on cue, the minute the boys felt like they had the fire completely out, it started pouring rain.

figures

We were all exhausted, dirty, sick from smelling the smoke and grateful this horrible experience was over.

I slept off and on the rest of the day and all thru the night, feeling somewhat better this morning but still feeling weak and tired.

Seths comment was "I never want to be a fireman."