As I write this, I am not where I am supposed to be. This isn’t a philosophical treatise on anything, I literally did not expect to be at home today here in beautiful Summerfell (the headquarters of our operations here in Southern California). Instead, both Mrs. Monkeyfun and I were supposed to be in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, running games of “A Town Called Malice” in Portland and Seattle. Yes, I realize this week is also GenCon, but when we realized we weren’t able to attend we started thinking about other plans.

We frequently travel up to the Northwest with our games in tow, running them for our friends and family up there at the local gaming stores (e.g. Mox Boarding House, Zulu’s Board Cafe, Guardian Games in Portland, etc.) And although many of our friends in the industry were to be in Indianapolis, we felt a good portion of folks would still be home and we would enjoy the visit.

That was the plan.

Now we also had the wild idea that we would camp our way up to the Northwest. That’s a wild idea, because neither of us are what you’d consider regular campers. Last time I had done so, we had just started a new millennium. But both Mrs. Monkeyfun and I are adventurous in our way, and thought it would be a pretty experience to see the state parks of Central and Northern California, making our way into Oregon and eventually Seattle. We bought some camping equipment, packed the Monkeymobile, and made reservations for campgrounds along the way.

Again. That was the plan.

We did manage to camp one night, until we managed to get near Redding, California. That’s when all Hell broke loose, in probably the most literal sense of the word. Redding is (at the time of this writing) experiencing a terrible fire (considered the tenth worst in California history), one that actually burnt our scheduled campsite to the ground. Before you crack wise, no we were not there yet. So no, we didn’t start it. Nor were we in serious danger, thanks to our timing. But the overall evacuations and the emergency situation required a turnaround and a hard decision to head back to Summerfell, making our apologies to our scheduled appointments up in the NW. It was the right call to come home.

At the time of this writing, over 100,000 acres have been devastated with over a thousand homes lost. The lives lost have been  pretty tragic (and I’ll skip the details on that, it’s pretty grim). I have included here the photo snapped from the hotel we managed to snag – the last hotel room available might I add, and there were more people looking for shelter. That red dot is the moon, the color of blood red because of the blaze. The skies were thick with smoke for hundreds of miles, and it was an extremely humbling experience. But we were okay, and hope those who live in the area will be, too.

If you’d like to donate to the victim relief – click this link to the Community Disaster Relief Fund.