Grass Fire

I’m married to a news photographer. They’re the guys who run around with the big cameras on the their shoulder and shoot everything from Olympics to City-council meetings; TRAX accidents to the American Idol finale; and home invasions, robberies, high speed chases to the NBA finals. Needless to say, there are certainly some assignments that are more glamorous than others.

At any rate, when married to a camera news guy, they tend to always be on the lookout for…. Well, news. Any time there are flashing lights, Mark will pay extra close attention sometimes taking a detour or two. Any time we see something odd like a herd of cattle roaming around an exit ramp, Mark pulls over and gets his camera. And any time there is a plume of black smoke stretching into the sky, we find it. (Starting to sound like Super Heroes, huh?)

That’s what happened on Saturday afternoon. Mark, Ginger (the dog) and I were running errands and doing regular Saturday-type things when we saw a big cloud of smoke. At first we panicked cause it looked like it was our house. Then we panicked because it looked like it could be Ginger’s daycare. So we, of course, drove to it.

It was a grass fire next to TRAX at 4500 S. The smoke was thick and black – billowing out over traffic and causing quite a back up. Mark pulled up onto the median and went to work, disappearing into the smoky blanket. Ginger and I just sat there. The windows were down a bit and the AC was on but I almost thought I could feel the heat. Perhaps I was being dramatic, after all, it was 100 degrees that day. People driving by the news vehicle all strained to look in and see if I was somebody… (sorry folks). Ginger ranged from curious to nervous about the whole event and I just felt a little odd sitting on this island in the middle of 4500 s.

Killing time, I decided to pull out my little digital camera and shoot some video of my own. Trying to do what I’ve seen Mark do, I was very proud of one artistic shot through the side mirror. If you look closely, you can see Mark at work along with the firefighters. Perhaps a career change is in order for myself?… Ms. Photog!