Translation of a frist language: English S202
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
TEXT ORIGINAL:
“He doesn’t do well in population with a lot of people,” she said. “He’s able to be a
hermit up there. He is able to have his small circle of friends and keep to himself. He
knows how to cut wood.”
The 43-year-old moved here three years ago from Idaho to be with her parents. She
stayed for them — and because it’s beautiful and quiet and she could grow a little
cannabis and stay away from the crowds in “town,” aka Oroville, populati20,000.
She has “social anxiety hella tough,” and in Berry Creek, “I don’t have to deal with
people.”
Now, she sleeps in her van in the parking lot of a Motel 6. The Red Cross has placed
her parents, like dozens of other evacuees, in the motel, along with their dogs. Their
property on twisty Gamble Road was destroyed in the blaze. All that remains are the
skeletons of burned-out pickup trucks, the husks of torched appliances, piles of
rubble.
And, they later learned, the carcasses of four dogs.
“Now that the smoke has cleared a little and things are starting to calm down,” she
said in a text Friday morning, “we are faced with a future [that’s] a decision of what
to do next. A little lost, a little uncertain. Nothing but time to think about all that’s
happened.”
But “the creek is no place for quitters,” she wrote. “That’s how I know Berry Creek
will recover — because we have love, camaraderie and believe in our town.”
And just what kind of a place is Berry Creek? If you ask Loren Gill, chairman of the
Berry Creek Community Assn.’s executive council, it isn’t a place at all. There is no
downtown. Homes are tucked away from the main roads, far from the gaze of those
passing through to someplace else.
Sure, “there’s a dot on the map called Berry Creek,” he will tell you. “But it moves
around a lot.… Nobody knows where Berry Creek is. Nobody outside of Berry Creek
— the flatlanders. It isn’t a place. It’s a ZIP Code.”
