• A 3-day supply of non-perishable tolerance for watching news reports of wildfire engulfing the land near your home, glued to viewing silhouettes of the mountainside aflame in terror & awe; & 3 gallons of the milk of human kindness
• A map with at least 2 evacuation routes; one that leads back to the home in your heart; & one that leads to the land that is not in drought, that is not whipped by a week of Santa Ana’s so strong they dry your tears before they can roll down your cheeks or into the canyons & creeks where the endangered California Tiger Salamander and the century plants and the mountain lions roam & nature clings to its last refuge free from human habitation
• Necessary prescriptions for “Lost Hope” and medication to boost “We’re All In This Together”
• A change of clothes from Daisy Dukes and a bikini top to a UCLA Hoodie and sweat pants and extra eyeglasses and contacts to read past the blame of the LA County Mayor, The Fire Chief, the eucalyptus, the bone-dry fire hydrants to – maybe – “15 000 Fire Trucks Could Have Saved Us” to another “Once in a 100-year Wildfire”
• A first misinformation aid kit & pseudo-science sanitation supplies
• A flashlight to spark the candle in your chest, the one that helps you go on & battery-powered radio with extra batteries for your partner, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your neighbor, when they lose power, too.
• Copies of important documents (birth certificates, passports, etc.), children’s drawings, family photos, those cute pictures of the dog & cat curled up on your lap & snapshots of California beach days and palm-tree lined boulevards & the scrub jay in your backyard dive-bombing the cat & the family of skunks slinking past the side of your home, their home that is now – your home that is now –
• Pet food & water for yourself & water left out for the wildlife and for the thirst of your inner mountain lion so it will have something to drink when it returns home, in whatever state it is in, it will need to drink, it will need to be kept alive just a little longer so that you can re-build your heart or your home, or both, and it will return free and hydrated, able to roam the chaparral and the canyons beyond a human footprint once again…
Always have sturdy shoes and a flashlight near your bed, ready for sudden night evacuations.
*Inspired by the Cal Fire “Your ‘Go-Bag’ Checklist”
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Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon is an Australian-American writer, songwriter and educator who lived in California for 12 years. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in Entropy, Hippocampus, Cordite and Australian Book Review. She has won the Bruce Dawe and KSP Poetry Prizes; and has been shortlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. In 2024 she was awarded the Red Room Poetry and Mascara Emerging Critics Fellowships. Her second poetry book, If There Is a Butterfly That Drinks Tears, was recently released by Life Before Man/Gazebo Books. Her work is widely anthologised and awarded across Australia and the United States.
