by Rev. Marlene Urban-Funk, Cal-Pac Camp & Retreats
One year ago today the town of Wrightwood was evacuated in urgency with the Bridge Fire moving in at an unprecedented speed. Camp Wrightwood has been a fixture in the small mountain town of Wrightwood since 1948. For generations this sacred space has served as a home of respite, spiritual transformation, community building and environmental education. On September 10th, 2024 it was threatened by a wildfire that moved at a rate beyond most people’s imagining. Alerts went from minimum to urgent within minutes. Camp Wrightwood, under the exceptional leadership of Director Kenny Funk, was evacuated quickly and with care, and then turned over to Firefighting crews for their use. Thanks to the qualified, courageous and numerous Fire Personnel (over 2,500 by the time of 0% containment) the Bridge Fire was held back from decimating our town, and as a result our treasured UMC camp. (As sidenote Fire Personnel were simultaneously fighting a fire that was threatening Lazy W Ranch, one of our other UMC Camps)
Today, on the one-year anniversary of the evacuations, Camp Wrightwood Staff chose to spend a day in service to one of our neighbors who recently lost her husband to cancer at age 55. Her large backyard was mitigated: cutting trees to a fire-safe height, raking and bagging 34 bags of fallen leaves, falling dead trees and generally cleaning up the spacious yard. This will serve for years in keeping our neighbor’s house safer from fire danger. It will also benefit those who gather for her husband’s memorial service in ten days. Seven staff and one volunteer showed up and worked tirelessly for four hours to make our neighbor’s yard more beautiful, more healthy and more fire-resistant.
As someone who lived through the red sky and the ash falling like snow in Wrightwood a year ago, and as a mom who packed up everything that she felt was most important and valuable to our family, I feel a deep sense of gratitude. I am grateful for the leadership of Kenny Funk; grateful for the hard work, sincere generosity, and skillful expertise of Camp Wrightwood Staff; grateful for thousands of fire personnel; grateful for the Fenner program that equips people with skills and empowers them to use them; grateful for Mariposa Retreat Center where some Wrightwood residents (including me and mine) could be housed while we were in the great unknown of evacuation; grateful for a mountain community that in this past year has grown closer in so many ways; and grateful to a Spirit/God/Presence that guides and empowers.
Today, in remembrance of a traumatic day for our community, Camp Wrightwood Staff showed up to do something generous, something kind, something valuable and something healing for one of our community members. Maybe this is the best of us, the best of what we can do on a day that is terribly hard to remember. We can show up. We can put on gloves. We can trim up trees and rake leaves. We can tend to the earth and hug a neighbor. We can feel grateful.
