Ode to Dixie Who Didn’t Make It Out of the Fire

One more heartbreaking loss from the fires.

Dixie, one of the horses at one of the ranches in the Three Forks area of Trinity County that was overrun by fire earlier this month, isn’t ever coming home.

“Dixie was found today,” a family member told us. “She unfortunately did not make it out as we had hoped.”

“Dixie went missing the morning the Hopkins fire blew up in Three Forks and wiped out the community,” we were told several days ago and we shared a post hoping someone might know where the old mustang had disappeared to.

Today we know that the family who lost so much in the fire, lost one more precious life, just as so many others have this terrible wildfire season.

We dedicate this song mourning the loss of a culture and a way of life and a struggle to survive in a dark time sung by Joan Baez to Dixie and to her family and all the others who have lost so very much.

(And, please, we’re glad the Union won. That doesn’t mean we can’t understand the loss and pain expressed in the music here. And we feel the emotion, if not the lyrics, captures a bit of Dixie’s passing.)

You take what you need and you leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “Na, la, la, la, na, na
La la, na, na, la, la, la, la, la”