After fifteen days away, I returned to San Diego on Saturday. The whole town, starting inside of the airport terminal, smelled like a campfire, and parts of town still do. My car at the airport parking lot was sprinkled with a brownish ash. I then get home. Mainly, it’s what I imagined: random ash deposits every few feet on sidewalks and patios, ashes even in places inside my house, bad visibility, bad brownish air (after a few hours you get a headache, and I still have one), the western and northern edges of Rancho Bernardo thoroughly and “expertly” scorched off some main roads right to the curb, destroyed or partly-destroyed homes, a few police barriers still up, an odd patch work of burned-out areas, and bald reddish mountain sides.
