Stew's Clues: Part Of My Childhood Is Going Up In Smoke.

Lake Arrowhead, looking southwest from Mountains Community Hospital turnout.

I'm watching all of the news coverage and checking the Rim of the World fire incident online scanner; and I realize that most of my childhood haunts are either threatened or gone.

I grew up in Running Springs between 1971 to 1976. Although there are some bitter sweet memories there, they are still memories of my childhood. The old home on Summit Drive according to the fire map is gone, friends homes that I used to visit all the time are gone, areas where my favorite 4th grade teacher, Mr. Horton, used to take our class and teach us about mountain nature and history are gone (Smiley Park), and the place I used to play Little League baseball are all just a memory.

Running Springs.

I just saw on the scanner that they caught some guy trying to set a fire near Camp Seely, Crestline. He's in custody.

We moved to Lake Arrowhead in 1977. We lived on Yosemite which is the northern part of Lake Arrowhead, known as North Shore. Around spring of 1983, we moved to Point Hamiltar, a gated community where my parents reside today.

Growing up in the mountains has a certain carefree memory for me. I remember how fireplaces would fill the air while taking a walk on a 48 degree day, leaves changing into fall colours. I remember going to the store for something with my dad and noticing the snow filled pine trees that were lit up only by the reflection of the car headlights.

Just the feeling of seeing pine trees everywhere is something that I appreciate more now than the time I lived up there. Being a teenager in Lake Arrowhead, you didn't really think anything like a major fire would ever happen. You take it for granted when you're younger, wanting to just get off the mountain when you graduate and make a living in a place that's not so boring. How little I knew then. How little I knew that some of the structures that are now gone, were the last time I would ever see that building or home ever again.

So much history..........I am so nostalgic over the Lake Arrowhead of the 30's and 40's. Men who walked around the popular mountain resort hot spot, "The Village", closely resembling the likes of Bing Crosby. You know, the type that personified the 1930's Hollywood Celebrities of the day. The generation that had class and style and seemed to romance that whole Swiss Alps resort vibe in the mountains. Rock and wood cabins with cross-country skis mounted to the walls next to the deer antlers mounted over the door entrance.

I picture many of these type of homes going up in flames, very much like the time in 1978. I witnessed our beloved historical Village set ablaze from various fire departments; it was called "Learn and Burn". The old Village had fallen to poor earthquake structure codes and was too costly to restore. It was time to make "Lake Arrowhead New Again". Please, a Newport, jetset, high brow, "have more money than you", resort for the Orange County loving visitors. Nothing the local mountain residents would ever grow found of, but instead tolerate. "Fashion Island among the pines". Nothing classy, just commercial. It's so insulting.

Since the last fire, almost exactly 4 years to the date, Lake Arrowhead didn't resemble the Arrowhead I grew up in. Rim Forest with it's pine trees now resembling blackened tooth picks stuck in the ground, vast dirt areas with scattered picnic tables that were once hidden under acres of pines and oaks. I never wanted to go back. Visiting my parents became almost unbearable. I would just focus on the road and force myself not to look around.

I was up recently about two months ago and it was just slightly greener, mostly from oak trees, but not pines. The landscape still sort of resembles a giant scalp with hair plugs.

My parents have evacuated. They are staying in a hotel for the time. Just waiting and hoping for the best but expecting who knows.

I sit here now, with so many feelings, memories, ache, sadness, anger, disappointment, anxiousness, and mostly a heavy heart. I'm left here going over all the old times I had; places I visited friends....neighborhoods I used to trick-or-treat year after year,......a girl's house I drove up to in order to pick up for a Homecoming Dance,...walking down streets with crunching snow at my feet while staring straight up to the sky.....seeing stars that looked like they were 100 feet away, bordered by the silouettes of pines "hushing" through the branches. No street lights, no distant roar of a freeway or car traffic. Just a soft "whoooooosh" through the pines. I can never revisit these places that provided these memories.

Fire fighters in Lake Arrowhead are seeing a different mountain tonight; the wind is gusty at times, stars are obscurred by smoke, and the crunching snow is replaced with the crackling of timber and the idle of a Cummins diesel.