“I guess I’ll have to find my way by heart, ‘til I can grow accustomed to the dark.” Theresa Andersson, Accustomed to the Dark
On a dry, hot, windy night late last fall, I drove 70 miles an hour, headed south at midnight with a fiery ridge burning in my rearview mirror.
It was an unexpected exit.
Just an hour before, I’d been willing myself to sleep in the sparse but cozy cabin I had cloistered myself away in for what was supposed to be a week of concentrated writing time. I was working on a book chapter about the trauma that can come with working on disasters as a scientist and science communicator.
The week started off well enough. The fall weather was beautiful and I walked trails along this sweet creek, and I was actually writing. But, mid-way through the week, California’s infamous fire weather kicked up in a big way, and the region was subjected to the experimental power safety shut-offs that our energy utility is doing in an effort to…keep fires from starting.
The electricity went off around 3pm on Wednesday afternoon and after searching for battery operated lights and worrying about whether the water would still work, I prepared to get through some days without power. I made note of how to get to the fairgrounds the next day so that I could charge my computer at the stations there. It seemed doable for a clearly adaptable human, though certainly distracting.
However, as it got darker, the wind began to howl, and the air dried out and heated up in an truly uncanny way. I’m from Arizona and understand dry and hot, but this was nothing like anything I’d ever felt before.
The wind began to come in dramatic bursts, one minute there was complete and utter silence and stillness, the next I was inhaling the gritty dust and pollen coming up off the ground, as well as down from the trees, as the wind blew it straight through the cabin.
Feeling increasingly uneasy, I decided to check Twitter one last time, and there it was. A fire had started about 10 miles away. It was initially difficult to figure out exactly where the fire was relative to where I was, especially since I was in terrain that while familiar with, I am not totally comfortable with.
I spent about an hour trying to convince myself to stay, but the many images and stories ingrained into my head and heart about death-by-evacuation in recent fires convinced me that because I could leave, I would. Evacuating in the dark, alone, is not an experience I can recommend. Luckily, as a visitor, all I had to do was gather up what I’d brought with me; there were no excruciating decisions about what to bring.
Ultimately, the Kincade Fire was out within two weeks. Although it led to an unprecedented evacuation order that could only have meant officials believed it was possible for the fire to jump Highway 101 and make a run for the coast some 40 miles to the west, that luckily did not happen, this time.
Days later, I willingly went back into the fire evacuation zone with a film crew led by Christine Arena. At that point, the fire was largely under control, but many things were still smoldering and occasionally flaring up, including the posts that hold guardrails up, many stumps, and the ground. After a full day of visiting differently destroyed sites, we watched a ground fire restart in the wind and be quickly put out by a fire crew that seemed to magically arrive. That was shortly followed by another larger flare up about a mile away, and I’d had enough of the Kincade Fire, yet again.
Now here we are in a world that has transformed in ways that are both very familiar and unrecognizable to my disaster addled soul. Every year, I think it’s not possible to dread fire season more, and yet, somehow, I do. For the past couple, Max Moritz and I have been arguing for a public health approach to wildfire — one that doesn’t normalize death. Now what? Wish I had a deeper lesson here, but all I can say is that we truly are — both literally and metaphorically — stumbling through the dark.
Recommended:
I’ve been meaning to press send on this for…a few months, so some of my recommendations are not brand new, but I stand by them.
At coronavirus comedy show, Asian standups don’t mask feelings about racism by Zijia Song in Bedford + Bowery. Also: follow @kylemarian on Twitter!
Lizards gone wild! UC Berkeley researcher’s ‘feminist science’ bucks male-dominated inquiry by Ethan Baron in the Mercury News. Also: follow @ambikakamath on Twitter!
Everything worthwhile is done with other people, an interview with Mariame Kaba by Eve Ewing in Adi Magazine. Relatedly, I enjoyed this conversation between Jia Tolentino and Barbara Ehrenreich.
Whatever happened to ________? by Anonymous for Longreads. I could write an essay about this essay.
I’ve been writing a lot, book and otherwise, including about water and COVID-19, droughts, beavers, and more + Mallika Nocco, Sam Sandoval, and I have a new podcast about all things California water; it’s called Water Talk, found on Apple, Spotify, Google, etc.
I welcome any thoughts you want to send me about the content of this newsletter or otherwise.