The Dream of California Is Up in Smoke

Opinion|The Dream of California Is Up in Smoke

I’ve heard people say they couldn’t live in Los Angeles because they’d miss the changing of the seasons, but spending much of my childhood on a ranch in Malibu, I watched as the storms rolled in during the winter months, the land turning green and lush, then blossoming in wild colors and sweet scents in spring, browning and drying out in summer before the air turned crisp in autumn and orange leaves fell from trees to blanket the ground.

There were groves of oak trees, endless green pastures and a pond where ducks made their home every year. Tiny frogs jumped all over the banks of the pond. I’d scoop some up in my hands and laugh when they leaped out, back into the mud. When the winds kicked up in October and November, parts of the ranch did burn a couple of times. But then the rains would come and the land would heal.

The ranch was where we spent our weekends. During the week we lived in Pacific Palisades, so quiet it felt almost like a secret refuge from the noise and busyness of downtown. But that was Los Angeles, too. Now that world is gone.

To look at the footage and the photographs of what the voracious fire turned those neighborhoods into is like looking at a war zone. Everyone is trying to process the grief, the shock. The truth is we’d lost it all well before the fires so mercilessly swept through. The flames just sealed the deal.

I once thought that the land I loved so much would last forever. I couldn’t imagine an Earth that would groan and rage and turn chaotic because of human carelessness, human greed and the ignorant assumption that we could just keep pumping poisons into the atmosphere with no repercussions.

Often over the past few days, I’ve been reminded of the aftermath of Sept. 11, how no one seemed like a stranger.