What I’ve learned about California is that it burns.
Over harvested, corrupt water deals, over -population, soil stripped, drought. The fires, they spark and they spread and people are terrified and run in front of the fast moving flames that eat and eat everything in its path as fire was made to do.
Homes, businesses, identity, equity, balance, stability – gone in an instant. What is left? Terror, loss, fear, extreme vulnerability. Fire burns away the illusion of daily complacency and place and leaves the victims with a helpless exposure to the reality of precariousness.
The hope being that the suffering will transcend the mobilization of community, that we will finally turn to each other in compassion during great hardship. And we do. We can lean on each other, heroes sprung fully formed from the smoke and flames.
As we smother our environment, we blossom toward each other through spontaneous caretaking – is it worth it?
The fire. The hurricane. The tornado. The tsunami. The earthquake.
These are photos of Santa Barbara as the fires from Ventura County crept up the coast at first and leapt in full force propelled by the fierce Santa Ana winds. The smell of fire and smoke and the heaviness of breathing made me deeply uneasy and I abruptly left the coast 2 weeks ago as it became apparent that my original plan of heading into Ventura and offering assistance and documenting would be as an amateur, foolhardy and unhelpful in the epicenter of unfolding disaster. I’ll go and find my fire women after the flames have cooled a bit and there has been time to breathe. I headed north and then east to where the air cleared and my lungs and my fight or flight relaxed. I’m in the desert now in all the crisp cold edges of winter in the desert and the fires though close, feel as far as the stars.
This is the nature of refuge.
