We
were only a few hours’ drive north of the California-Oregon border when
I began to feel the pangs of survivor’s guilt. It was mid-August, and
the news from back home was no good. We had busted out of the San
Francisco Bay Area just as the heat wave began to sizzle California, and
as we drove north through wine country, the temperature gauge in our
car said it was 108 degrees outside. Days 
later, a freak electric storm
swung across the state, sparking hundreds of fires. Some of our favorite
places were burning: the forested mountains around Santa Cruz and the
oak woodlands west of Davis, where we had spent many summer afternoons
lounging on the banks of Putah Creek. Smoke was already beginning to
choke our friends and former neighbors. “You got out just in time,” a
buddy texted. “California is imploding.”
The Oregon coast felt, at that time, like a whole new world. As we threaded our way up Highway 1, the sky was cool and gray, and by evening a thick fog had turned into a spitting rain. The smoke and fires might as well have been on another planet. The rain was a relief, but I couldn’t shake a certain shame. I felt bad about our good fortune, about leaving our community behind to suffer.
I had lived in California for more than 20 years, and my family’s
long-planned departure was supposed to be an adventure of sorts, an
opportunity to start a new life for ourselves in the Pacific Northwest.
For months, we had been looking forward to the move with a mix of
trepidation and excitement, the swirl of emotions common to any
emigrant: nostalgia for the life we had built, spiked with the thrill of
surprising horizons. But now, as grim news piled up in our newsfeeds,
the move had taken on a sour taste.
We weren’t merely heading toward a new home in another state. With a disaster unfolding behind us, we were fleeing."
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