During the Pfeiffer Ridge fire her home for 23 years burned to the ground.

Late in the evening on Dec. 15, as Deborah Medow was packing and vacuuming, preparing to leave for a workshop at Esalen Institute, the phone rang just before midnight. Her daughter Geneviève was on the road home for the holidays from Portland when she learned of a fire in Big Sur. Rikki, Geneviève’s older sister, who lives in Illinois, awoke suddenly at 3:30am, logged onto Facebook and found a message from her sister about the fire. She, too, called and told her mom to leave the house immediately.

This was not Deborah’s first dance with mother nature. In the early 1970s, on her first day as the caretaker for Coast Gallery, February rains flooded the adjacent stream and carried her new-to-be house down the hillside (she had yet to move her belongings in, so her possessions were unharmed).

And in the mid-1980s, while she was was living on Partington Ridge in Big Sur, a freak fire in the rental below spread and burned the entire house to the ground. Only her Dodge Colt Wagon was spared.

We caught up with Deborah six days after the Pfeiffer fire, during a break from a massage workshop she was leading at Esalen Institute, where she is manager of the Healing Arts Department.

The Weekly: At about 1:30am, a neighbor encouraged you to leave while the road was passable. What was going on in your mind?

Medow: I didn’t think it was going to get to my house. I was watching the fire and it was beautiful, the fire burning down the hill. It kept coming. Later I learned it burned down my house.

What have you been feeling since this ordeal began?

Gratitude, for people who have come forward – with their words and deeds to support me and other people in the fire. The whole experience makes me question what I’m doing, I’ve been looking at what’s the meaning of life. Maybe that’s why this is happening to me – to enable me to live my life even more fully because I see the preciousness and transitoriness of things.

Two fires, one flood. Why you?

Mostly I haven’t been asking, “why me?” I suppose these are lessons in nonattachment – to value human life instead of stuff. It’s my opportunity to start being conscious about what I take on as material possession. Maybe this time I had too much because I’ve lost it all before. In yoga, aparigraha is non-collecting, non-hoarding, to make sure possessions don’t take control.

I am 65. I hate to admit it. And I’m still sorting it out, trying to move forward without “why me” or “poor me.” I am trying to keep my humor, and most of the time that is working.

What do you value most about living in a beautiful, remote area?

I love the peace. The quiet. I can watch hawks fly, I can listen to the sound of an owl at night. The coyotes. The bobcats. Even the wafting smell of the skunks. I love living out there. Smelling the fresh air. Looking at the ocean from higher. I like my little garden. I liked raising my child where she could walk out the door and go to the neighbors and I didn’t think twice about it. I have a road to deal with that’s a mess in the winter, but I love it all.

Is there anything different, losing all your stuff a second time around?

The saddest thing is my daughter lost the mementos of her childhood. I didn’t grab her writings, her note to the tooth fairy, about her first boyfriend, all her journals. I regret I didn’t save her writings, her etchings. She was born in the house. That has a lot of special meaning.

And I lost a candid photograph of my mom when she was young, and she’s gone. I always wear my mom’s necklace and my dad’s ring. And I have these on me now. I was wearing the necklace. I grabbed the ring.

But they are just things. Really it is who we are and how we live our lives. I can still give something away. It’s about sharing and caring and giving away.

Anything that you particularly miss?

I’ve had 23 years of living on Front Hill Road, of looking out at the beautiful view. It’s restful to be at my house. I miss that. And I really miss my foam memory bed. I loved that bed.