How drinking with your neighbors can save your life

Building community at home

Gretchen de Limur never imagined that drinking with her neighbors would save her house. After years of participating in, and later hosting, an annual neighborhood holiday potluck, she and her Calistoga community had a robust email/phone tree list at the ready when the 2020 Glass Fire came blazing up the hill. One guy across the Valley called a friend to tell him about the wind-fueled flames, and within minutes, the entire community was aware of the approaching fire.

As the community of Calistoga evacuated, 36,000 acres and 113 houses burned. Gretchen’s, and many of her neighbors’ houses up on Diamond Mountain, survived. Some may call it luck, but residents of fire-prone communities say otherwise. Gretchen and her neighbors had created the Diamond Mountain Fire Safe Council two years prior. The 2017 Tubbs Fire sparked her to devote her life to educating herself, and the 150 residents and vineyard owners of Diamond Mountain. The goal was to harden their community for the catastrophic wildfires they knew would keep coming. A herculean effort that proved to be a success.

After teaching their neighbors to clear out dead brush, they moved onto larger projects like creating defensible space like fire roads, trimming hazardous trees, creating alternate evacuation routes, and making better evacuation route signs. She and her team of volunteers attend trainings led by indigenous communities, scientists, fire fighters, and then fundraise to implement the lessons learned.

Having strong community ties, Gretchen said when we spoke earlier this year by phone, enables them to prepare for the predicted future. And protect each other in the process.

Building strong community ties

So how do busy people with kids or jobs who feel like they have no time in the day to call their besties or their parents build strong community ties? Let’s take Gretchen’s advice and start with the fun part. Let’s drink with our neighbors. It doesn’t have to be boozy. Make some lemonade, pop open a lawn chair, put on your mask, and hang out in front of your house. Say hi to people who pass and, as long as they are wearing a mask too, invite them to join you (in a socially distanced way, of course).

Maybe you don’t like boozing it up. Instead, follow my younger son Nikko’s lead and bake for your neighbors. For Valentine’s Day, he made a bunch of cookies and delivered them door to door.

Now this isn’t always a natural thing for city dwellers. In fact, when I lived in San Francisco, I knew few of my neighbors. It took having kids to realize that it actually mattered who lived in close proximity to us. Since then, I’ve made an effort in every community I lived in to know all my neighbors. I know who just had surgery and who might need me to grab something at the market for them, and which of them like to have a good glass of prosecco on warm afternoons.

According to Gretchen and other community leaders, these ties could literally save our lives. They are the bedrock of our existence. Our neighbors know when we aren’t in town, or when they haven’t seen us doing your usual routine in a few days. They also will let us know when crises are on the way. In effect, they become the tribe we need.

Now, whenever I move, I make sure my sons know everyone on the block too. Maybe they aren’t jazzed about getting recruited to pull a neighbor’s weeds, or help with some tech issue, but they feel safer knowing everyone who lives around us. And they’ve seen how communities have come together to attend to each other.

This week’s action

Connect with your neighbors this week. If you don’t have a ton of time, recruit someone who doesn’t have kids (or is retired) to create an email/phone list for the neighborhood. Don’t think of it as NextDoor, which is more like a frantic neighborhood watch; instead think about collecting the phone numbers of who you’d call if a fire was coming up your block and you needed to make sure everyone was out.

Once you have your phone tree list, put on your mask, and spend some time out front of your house. Maybe have porch wine, or socially distanced drinks on lawn chairs in your front yard or driveway with a neighbor. We did this last summer and met so many people we’d never even seen. Or bake some cookies with your kids and bring them over to your neighbors.

As these relationships deepen, talk to your neighbors about what would make your street better—do you want to do a weekly trash clean up? Offer free produce to fight food insecurity? Plant a community garden? Create an annual block party?

And then share with us how you’ve connected with the folks next door and how it’s made a difference in your community.

On my nightstand

I’ve been researching environmental book clubs and have found some great ideas about what to read. And I realized I rarely share with you what’s on my nightstand. So, I decided to give you a little peek at what I’m reading right now. I’m taking my time with the brilliant anthology All We Can Save wishing I could be friends with all these amazing writers.

When I need a dash of hope, I dive into the The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Doug Abrams. This book has helped me find some peace throughout the pandemic.

Most nights, I’m beat and can only read a couple pages before passing out, but right now I’m enjoying Lysley Tenorio’s The Son of Good Fortune and Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, a delightful marination on journeying through the stories we encounter on the road.

What’s inspiring you these days?