One of my homelands is burning
Are LA's fires a lesson about impermanence or a kick in the butt to take action?
This past Sunday, we drove south from Los Angeles, weaving through the hills of Glendale. Sylmar and West Hills glittered in the distance. We passed the Hollywood Hills, and farther west, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Topanga. Never would I have expected that in just a couple days the city that raised me would be forever changed.
I moved to the foothills of Los Angeles when I was ten years old. We lived in the north part of the San Fernando Valley, near the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake. Our house butted up to a very dry hill that regularly caught on fire. The brushfires coaxed wildlife into our yard, rodents and snakes, coyotes and critters looking for a safe haven in our well-watered grass.
I remember once standing opposite our hill, on the southern side of the valley, watching flames loom over our neighborhood, feeling distinctly that even though LA felt like paradise to my teenage celebrity-obsessed self, maybe humans weren’t meant to crowd into this dry desert landscape. Yet I had no clear idea of where all of us could ever go.
Flash forward to this week. My valley surrounded by flames. West, north, east, south. Exit routes blocked. Air choked with smoke. Ash hitching rides for miles on Santa Ana winds. And I had to wonder what are we meant to learn from this?
When I start to catastrophize to my therapist, she’ll always insert her Buddhist perspective. Nothing is permanent, Michele. Every single thing we love on this Earth will die. Once you release the grip of your attachment, you will be better equipped to reside in the present moment. Having this perspective might even allow you to remain a glass half full kinda gal in our changing landscape.
I’ve read the books she recommends (Ecodharma being the most emotionally intense), and I try, I really do, to approach my world like the classes I teach. Everything occurring in a phase. Everything will end. Each phase is temporary.
But how do you learn to accept that beloved places are also impermanent?
The day the Los Angeles fires started, I asked my students to name their homelands. A place they most consider home. As an act of generosity, when I ask my students to share, I often share about myself as well. This is one way I attempt to create a safe community. I offer, so they offer. My answer to this query was complicated. My ancestors were migratory. Flowing from the Middle East to eastern Europe to New York and Ohio, where I arrived on the scene.
I have spent equal parts of my life in Ohio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with shorter, though no less meaningful, stays in New York, Santa Cruz and now San Diego. So when I talked about my homeland, I explained that I felt torn between Los Angeles (where I spent my formidable youth), San Francisco (where I grew into the adult I wanted to become) and now San Diego (where I am trying to plant roots).
This conversation occurred that the exact time when the Palisades fire began to burn. Within hours the high school I taught at would be incinerated. Also gone: the path I walked each afternoon to the beach, the mountain hamlet where Eddie, the boys and I shoved their bunkbed against our queen bed in our shared room, the Waldorf School I did a teaching internship, the seafood hut equidistant from my house and my parents.
There’s lots of blame out there right now for lack of water or infrastructure. There’s plenty of righteous anger, as well as that other more toxic kind that separates us from each other. The ugliness of our political system on full display.
Yet within all the swirling yucky emotions are speckles of light.
My friend Wendy says that the Altadena community is overwhelmed with generous resources (food, water, clothing): some might even have to be donated back. My friend Raquel is using her vast social media presence to share videos of a warehouse overflowing with offerings from her local parent group. Here in San Diego, my university compiled an exhaustive spreadsheet of resources for students and their families. These are tiny dots of love in the face of horrific destruction, price gouging, looting, the truth that our climate crisis is not off in some far flung future, it’s here, now, and we’ve got to stop pretending otherwise.
Solastalsia is the term for distress caused by environmental change. This is not a new phrase, but it is one that is become more real to more people each year. Angelenos are just the next community to be forced to process the loss of beloved places. None of these communities will ever be the same, which means LA will never be same. We’ll need to mourn an LA without the Reel Inn, or The Bunny Museum, without the trails first traipsed by the Tongva people. We’ll be forced to engage with a city without Pacific Palisades, or Altadena’s tight knit communities, with Malibu’s oceanfront property, or Topanga’s funkiness.
If I had an assignment for us to partake in right now, I’d say we cannot proceed unless we mourn these losses first.
But we also must lean into the anger and frustration. Not necessarily at politicians, but at the systems that aren’t changing fast enough to keep up. We can’t change the systems just yet, especially in the next four years. But we can buckle down and help prepare our communities for the inevitable.
Every time you look at the news about the fires, might you take some time afterward to write into your grief. Set a timer (maybe ten minutes) so it doesn’t overwhelm you. Allow yourself to feel the losses. Cry if you need to, it’s ok.
Then thank the feelings for being there and look outside. Notice what remains—a sparrow’s song, dry leaves becoming mulch, a neighbor whistling down the street.
Later, after the fires are out, make a list of the direct climate threats impacting your community. For example, my San Diego neighborhood is surrounded by canyons with lots of dry brush that could easily burn. We also are in a drought. And of course, it’s going to get very hot out here so we need lots more tree cover.
Finally, find one organization working to address one of this climate issues and commit to a little less TV watching or social media scrolling a week and volunteer to help.
If you can, share the resources you found as comments with others. Our online communities can help us connect with our IRL communities.
xx
~Michele
Awwww, thanks, my friend. Sending you lots of love
Important, moving words. I'm doing some work with Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which is based in the DC area as well as my local biking groups (on sustainable transportation).