Now that I'm a distributor, I sometimes wonder if people think I'm trying to sell fear? Fear of fire, fear of losing their personal property and maybe even their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am selling is peace of mind - knowing that in the event of a fire, one has the possibility of being able to defend themselves against the ravages of fire. I know that's what I get from having a supply on hand.
When I see pictures on the news of firestorms heading towards a housing development or a lone house out in the woods, I always imagine what it must be like to own one of those homes and see this violent force of nature coming down on you. Without some kind of plan of action, it must be a horrible feeling knowing that your only choice is to flee the scene before you are engulfed by the advancing flames. I'm pretty confident in the belief that you have worked as hard as I have, in your own way, to own your own home, vehicles and other personal property that stands to be wiped out in a matter of minutes by wild fire. In my case, I built my home with my own hands over the course of several years and lots and lots of hard work, blood, sweat and the occasional tear. Even if you didn't build your home personally with your own hands, you built it with the same hard work dedicated to a job or enterprise that allowed you to hire someone else to build it.
Notice that I use the word "home" and not house, because what we live in is a home and all the sentimental feelings that that word conjures up. A house belongs to some one else, a structure to which we have no emotional connection.
Sure, your house can be re-built with insurance money after the firestorm has passed. But what about all the memories and events that made that house your home? Wiped out in an instant... and you might even build an even nicer house, adding amenities that you wished you had the first time around. I grew up in the building business and know that if my home were wiped out I could re-build and hopefully have just as nice a home as we enjoy now but it would never be the same.
I bring this up because it just might be my nature to take a pro-active stance in the face of adversity. An example would be when just a few years ago we had an ongoing attack from bark beetle on our Piñon pine trees. As soon as we lost our first magnificent Piñon out in back of our house, I was on the line with our county extension agent and several nurseries to find out what the consensus on saving the trees was. I had seen an area on the way from town to our place that was being decimated but until that time our area hadn't been affected. My subsequent research found a much better product than what was being recommend locally and we started buying that and spraying our property. Bark beetles, like fire, is an act of nature but that didn't mean we had to stand by and let them wipe out our property. I spent something like the next 5 years spraying our entire 10 acres as I watched many of our neighbors lose hundreds of trees. Out of a couple thousand Piñons I'm happy to say that we lost maybe 10 trees. Our pro-active approach helped us to win the battle.
The bark beetle epidemic was like a slow moving fire. We had a chance to do something about it and so did our neighbors. It was interesting to see how few of them took the pro-active stance that we took and resigned themselves to the loss of their beautiful trees. These are the same folks who will have to stand by and watch their homes go up in flames if we are ever unfortunate enough to have a wild fire sweep through here.
There's no saying that we would even be here if a wild fire came through, but if we are, we will at least know that we have a fighting chance to save that which we have worked so hard for.
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