It's Nature's Way...

(AP Photo credit)

My good friend Bill called me this morning to shoot the breeze while we were both on our way to work. I was nearly to Salem, and would be in the parking garage in a couple of minutes, and he was stranded in the midst of a Sigalert traffic jam on the 118 Freeway in LA, with the traffic halted because of a severe fire.

As I spoke with him, and later as I logged onto the news and saw reports of the sundry fires hitting Southern California, I had a sense of relief, the kind of relief one might have after dodging a bullet. I remembered a time after I had sold my home in LA and I was driving north -- perhaps it was May 2006 and I was headed up to explore the Pacific Northwest. Whenever it was, there was a big headline-grabbing fire and I remember driving up I-5 toward the Bay Area, and seeing the inferno engulfing the hills along the north rim of the LA Basin. As I was driving north, I had the sense that at the very least, I wasn't supposed to live there anymore, and that, on a deeper level, neither is anyone else.

Don't get me wrong: I love Los Angeles and relish my memories of life there. But there's a place where my body intersects with my understanding of ecosystems, and my intuition about Pacha Mama to say that We Are Not Welcome there anymore. The hills are burning, we are being smoked out of our suburbs, and we can't afford the water it takes to keep putting out these fires. With each fire, comes subsequent mudslides that in turn, wreck our houses and our roads.

Now, in my condo in Van Nuys we only had to deal with the smoke, as the Valley floor was set safely back from the chapparal and the lawns and trees were moist with Colorado River irrigation. But to think that the water that was nurturing us came from miles away, and at the grave expense of other natural communities, gnawed at me. To hear about a new fire and wonder if my friends in the hills would be threatened by it, gnawed at me. Another fire, after another fire, after another fire, after another fire... Humans are supposed to have rainy seasons (the Southwest has ceased to have those anymore), sunny seasons, fall seasons, spring seasons ... but ... fire seasons?

It takes an immense effort of artificial infrastructure to make Southern California a habitable environment for mass quantities of humans, at great expense to all aspects of the environment. If I had to move back, you would probably see me making some kind of appeasement offerings to Pacha Mama on a regular basis to remind her that I know she doesn't prefer me here!

Here in the Northwest, our water is local and pure. Our lawns grow green in the winter and brown in the summer, but there's always an emeraldness to this place. We live in the midst of a fertile, green valley flanked by a giant River That Runs Through It. It's never brittle-hot in the Willamette Valley. We have spruce, firs, maples, moss, and ferns. The latter two grow wild in our lawns!

I remember a TV commercial from my youth, for a hand lotion where they took a dried-up sycamore leaf, and rubbed it with lotion to moisten and restore it. Living here, I truly feel like that dried up leaf turning green again. When it doesn't rain for a few days, I miss it and look forward to more rain. It keeps us alive, moist, softened.

I am grateful for my myriad LA friends and look forward to visiting all of you when I make it down there ... And I hope there are no fires going on when I do! And I would love for any of you to come visit here, try living here... in the end, it's MUCH more sustainable. I'm just sayin'...