In the Line of Fire

Where We Don't Belong

LOS ANGELES

All week, it has been like a funeral here in the city. The moon rose orange through the smoke. Although surrounded by miles of concrete, we could feel the million trees burning, taste the fear but even more the sadness in the air, as we sensed the firefighters' struggle to save homes that, one could argue, should never have been built. It was the sense that the city should not be here. We should not be here. That's what this land is telling us: You don't belong.

We think we can ignore nature, pave over the land and roll out our pre-grown lawns and pump imported water on them, and we'll never have to wake up from the dream. But there is no way to ignore 15 wildfires stretching from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.

The funeral we Angelenos feel is the periodic funeral of all our illusions about the nature of this place. The one that says this is paradise -- Connecticut, but with 300 days of sunshine a year, wide sandy beaches and jutting mountains. But once again, the land stands revealed as itself.

Before the coming of the Spanish, the local tribes routinely lit fires to burn the chaparral, a practice that the Mexican colonizers tried to abolish, then adopted, realizing that one cannot fight fire here. This land was meant to burn. It is the essence of the place: the topography, the vegetation, the weather, the winds, one ecosystem in balance with itself. The only difficulty is -- us. We aren't herders; we aren't hunters or gatherers. We build. We build and we build and we build. Farther and farther into the brush-covered hills, deeper and deeper into the funneled canyons. We love the shade and the trees and the space, the fresh scent of laurel sumac and pine. Who wouldn't?

But when immovable objects -- our own rigid structures -- meet irresistible force -- a wildfire, say, or four, or 15 -- something's going to give.

In May, Griffith Park, the rugged, mountainous 4,000-acre sanctuary at the heart of Los Angeles, burned. It had been such a lovely day, cool and clean and perfect. I was driving home from the market when I noticed the sweep of ugly orange cloud overhead, a stain against the bright blue, and followed it back to its origin, behind a rocky ridge, the boiling columns of black and white -- the black smoke outweighing the white, so I knew that was where the firefighters were. The white is the water evaporating, the effect of human resistance to disaster. Neighbors stood watching the flames rear up from behind the hill that bears the Hollywood sign. Only May, they said. What would happen when October came?

We have had hotter Octobers, 100, 105. But California is so dry now, a wet towel hung over a shower bar will be usable within half an hour. Street trees have been looking stressed all summer. People aren't used to watering them, they haven't really considered that our domestic forest of jacarandas and sweet gums, giant birds of paradise and avocados and Canary Island pines is a creation of man's will alone.

In the mountains, trees have been turning brown for years, their drought-strained wood sending out messages to the bark beetles -- bugs that would ordinarily be drowned in pine sap -- to come and feast. I went to summer camp in those mountains, learned to hike on their pine-fragrant trails, that smell in the morning the very best part of my overly urban childhood. I wonder if that forest will survive for my grandchildren to enjoy. Right now, I doubt it.

We have seen fires before, big fires, the Malibu fire of 1993, the San Diego fires of 2003. The big fire of my childhood was the Brentwood fire of 1961, which finally spurred the wealthy NIMBY residents to allow a fire station to be built in their midst. But we have never seen fires like these.

President Bush addressed us Tuesday morning, reassuring us that he was sending out the heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. One couldn't help thinking ungenerous thoughts. Oh goody, an attempt to illustrate that Things Have Changed since Hurricane Katrina and to rebuild our confidence in the administration's commitment to emergency preparedness, illustrating a hitherto undemonstrated concern about the welfare of citizens.

But this is not New Orleans. Let's just say, quite delicately, that many of the victims of this fire situation, especially in the San Diego area, live on the correct side of the socioeconomic spectrum. They have plastic, they have cars, they have choices. Not to mention that many hold a rightward position in party orientation. Exactly the type of person who will remember what went down when fire season ends and fundraising season begins. Yet cynical or not, we will be happy to take whatever help we can get.