In the early part of 2020 my wife got the idea to buy an undeveloped piece of land to start building our dream home on. She searched around online, and found the two adjacent one-acre plots for sale in the Sangre de Cristo mountains (near Mineral Hill, NM) that we eventually ended up buying with inheritance money around June of that year. We were able to get the two acres for close to $28,000. At that point, it was completely undeveloped without any utilities, so all we could do was camp in the summertime. After doing some research and saving money, we had a well drilled and an industrial pump installed in February of 2021. The well and pump cost $22,000 combined. Everything at this point was on track. We had a 5-year plan to build the first stages of an earth-dome house that we could live in. The future was bright. We were planning on having children and raising a family in that house.
I was put into a moral dilemma at my job and I made the tough decision to resign at the end of August 2021. This was a really difficult choice to make, because I had worked very hard to obtain that position, but on the other hand I felt that my employer had crossed a line I was not willing to go over, so it came down to money or my dignity. I chose dignity, but I still wonder if it was the wrong decision. I took some time off and finished a professional certification I had been working on. That was around October of 2021.
Right around the same time, I paid just over $5000 to have the easement/road to the land graded and had a culvert put in as well. This was in preparation for having a “5th wheel” RV trailer home towed up to the land so that I could start moving up there full time and begin construction in the Spring. We shopped around for trailers and bought a salvaged one that we really liked for $8500. The man that sold it to us was nice enough to tow it up north for us (a 2 hour drive) for free! We had the trailer in place by mid November, and I started moving in right away.
I worked that job as hard as I could from February to April. The fires started some time in March or early April. It’s hard to say, really, because it was a controlled burn they (the US Forest Service) had supposedly set and extinguished in the previous year, but it smoldered all winter, somehow, and then lit up again in March/April. On April 1st, I started an online book-selling business because the solar panels were not taking off like I had hoped. At this time, the fires were starting to get bigger, but this is a normal thing in New Mexico. Forest fires happen every year, and they usually just burn around most of the homes and cabins. My buddy and I have been working on his cabin up in the Jemez Mountains since the early 2000’s, and I’ve lost count of how many forest fires came close to his land and then burned in the other direction. After 15 years of that, you get used to the idea of yet-another forest fire burning near the cabins. At that point, I was still not very worried, although my wife was starting to show concern. We started shopping around for insurance, however because the trailer was salvaged and since the fire had already started, it was very hard to find anyone that was willing to insure what I had put up there on the mountain.
In the process of moving into the trailer, I started with the storage-closet stuff first. Eventually, all that was left of mine in Albuquerque was clothes I needed for work, kitchen appliances I needed for daily food prep, my file of important papers (the one thing I was wise enough to leave at the apartment), a bunch of laptops (I tend to collect them and there is no Internet in the mountains), a pair of skateboards (because I was more likely to ride them in town than in the mountains), my daily accouterments (phone, wallet, keys, glasses, etc.), plus basic hygiene stuff. That’s all that survived the fire. Everything else I owned was in the trailer. I should have cared WAY more than I did. But, with the fertility efforts and the three jobs and the money issues, I already had a lot on my plate. I wanted my trailer in the mountains to be my safe place, my sanctuary, the one spot in the world that I didn’t want to have to worry about. So, I had compartmentalized it in my head as bullet-proof and permanently out of danger. Boy was I wrong.
As we drove up to the land, we saw the Cerro Pelado fire burning over the mountains south of Santa Fe. This is the fire that had already burned my cabin buddy’s land in the Jemez. He had a similar story. He lived up there at least 6 months out of the year, already had several structures built, and had at least 15 years of personal belongings catalogued and stored up there. That fire took everything away from him. He was devastated. Seeing this fire still burning on the drive up was a foreboding sign of what was to come. As we approached Las Vegas, the sky turned orange and there was a wall of smoke to the north. It looked like an atomic bomb had gone off. You could hardly see the mountain for all the smoke. Once we got off of I-25, we drove frantically to the land, hoping we would have safe passage and enough time to save the most valuable items at least. When we had less than five miles to go, we ran into a roadblock. I pulled over, got out, hugged my wife, and started crying. She drove up to speak with the officer that was guarding the road block. He said he had closed the road an hour prior. So, if we had taken less time getting ready that morning, we could have made it to our land on time and possibly could have saved some of our items. That part still kills me to this very day.
Without any other options, we drove into Las Vegas to gather our thoughts and have some lunch. By that time, the sky had turned a darker red and ashes were raining down, so sitting outside and eating lunch was no longer an option. We just drove home in shock and despair. I recall saying when we got home “Well, at least we still have each other,” which gave me comfort at the time. I kept working at the solar job, in some denial about losing everything. It was actually a slow process, because even by the time we got back to Albuquerque, the trailer had not burned yet. There were several days between the road being blocked and the trailer burning, and all I could do during that time was watch the red line on the map get closer and closer to our land until it was obvious that it had swept through the area. One of the owners of a neighboring plot was able to sneak in there and take pictures of the damage, so that we knew we had lost nearly everything before we were allowed back in to see it for ourselves.
Fast forward to May 20th, and I was let go from the solar job. I was just too honest for door-to-door sales. I am not willing to lie to make a sale, and my fellow sales reps did not like it when I would correct their “misinformation” when trying to close a deal. I waited for my wife to come home so I could break the news to her. She had news of her own. She wanted a divorce. Everything since that night has been a blur of emotions, I am still trying to sort through everything. How much did the fire play into the divorce? My ex-wife would probably say not at all, but I have a hard time convincing myself that we would see the mountain burning like that and then she would ask for a divorce merely 3 weeks later out of pure coincidence. Awkward timing, in any case.
I know this is not about the divorce per se, but it did play a huge role in my reaction and my overall strategy. My whole reason for even owning the land and moving up there was now gone, along with the trailer. Heck, she was the one that first suggested it, and she was the one that found and chose the plots. And, to make things even more frustrating, if she had asked for a divorce before the fire, I would have at least had somewhere to go, instead of basically needing to either find a place to rent or become homeless. I could have been living in the trailer more full-time if she had asked for a divorce earlier in the year. Maybe I could have been there to cut a fire line around my trailer. I certainly could would have been able to pull the important things out of the trailer. I was just so focused on the fertility and the money situation that I trusted that we were a team and that we had each other’s backs. About two weeks before she asked for the divorce, she said to me “I promise to support you until you are back on your feet.” Now those words just sting. I have never had less support in my life, at a time when I needed it the most. So much for trying to save my marriage. And I thought we had made a lot of progress in counseling. I guess I was clueless to what was really going on with her.
We were finally able to go up and inspect the damage after they opened the roads some time in June. I remember that day being just pure shock and disbelief. Not only was most of my life a pile of ashes, a physical symbol of my smoldering marriage, but the once lush and green surroundings were cataclysmic. Most of the trees all around my land are blackened, if not gone. The neighboring plots of land all lost their campers too. I was only able to salvage ONE item out of the pile of ash and wreckage: a steel tactical axe that I will keep until the day I die. Luckily, the fire did not damage the well-head, nor the solar batteries that were stored near it, and the secondary generator that I bought specifically to run the well. All of that survived. But everything inside of the trailer was gone. The solar panels, the stored food, my winter clothes, my power tools, my entire personal library, including many rare and out-of-print books, first editions signed by the author, etc. Everything my deceased father ever gave me, including his journals, his Zippo lighter, his pocket watch, his gem collection, those all burned or melted too. My box of memories going back to high school also was lost. We also lost a custom hand-made cutting board with our family name carved into it that was a wedding gift from a family member. There were many irreplaceable, sentimental objects that were lost that are impossible to put a price on. So, now I am living in a yurt on a farm in Villanueva, about 40 minutes south of the land.
I am doing work/trade for my living situation, because it is all I can afford now since COVID made the rent rates go up all over Albuquerque. I cannot afford a place of my own any longer like I used to be able to. Las Vegas is the town that I get supplies in, and I have to cut wood to stay warm. In a sense, I am where I planned to be. But I have no wife, I have no family. I have no money. I have no career. All my friends let me go when I moved out of town. They can’t be bothered to drive 2 hours to visit me. I have no social life. Recently, there was a hard freeze and the pipes broke here on the farm, so I don’t even have running water anymore. I really have hit rock bottom.
Of course, you can’t blame it all on the fire. There was trouble brewing in paradise and I was playing a risky game. The decision to put all of my personal belongings in a trailer (along with $8500 worth of solar panel equipment that I forgot to mention) and not insure any of it was a poor one, for sure. And maybe the marriage was doomed from the start. One could argue that. And maybe I am stupid for resigning from a decent paying (but soul-sucking) position, that could also be true. But, with all of that going on already, the last thing I needed was to lose most of my personal belongings, specifically the sentimentally important items, and to take a $20,000+ loss on uninsured property. Like I said to my ex-wife the day we saw the mountain on fire “At least we still have each other”, but now it’s just me talking to "Bob", basically.
UPDATE: 05/17/2023
Since first writing this (as a personal account of the events for a legal case against the US Forest Service), I have left New Mexico entirely. I found my true soulmate / twin-flame person in Marfa, TX. The lights are pretty here, and the sunsets are spectacular. So far 2023 is turning out to be as good as 2022 was awful. Next stop, heaven on earth......
