THE INSPIRATION

It was the summer of 2020 and wildfires were raging throughout the state of California. We had just endured a long and exhausting lockdown and decided to escape the city to visit family in rural Oregon. The day we left Oregon, most of it caught fire. We drove home through a frightening hellscape of an orange and black sky, flames raging around us. Our family was forced to evacuate the same house that we had sought solace in.

I couldn’t sleep that night, my mind spinning from the events of the day. The next morning I woke up to an orange light streaming in through my bedroom window. My first thought was that my own house had caught fire. When I realized it hadn’t, I ran downstairs to a roomful of worried family.

That day, the entire Bay Area was orange from the layer of ash in the atmosphere. This picture used on the back of the shirt was taken as I drove across the Bay Bridge later that day. I sat in the passenger seat of a rented U-Haul as the orange sky glared down at me. The windshield wipers waved every so often to clear the ash that was falling and I wondered about the state of my life, and if I had carefully packed up all of my belongings only to have them destroyed in a wildfire.