Dear Will:

I’ve lived in Southern California since I was seven years old. In those early years, we lived in Redlands, jammed up against the San Bernardino mountains, a place where all of the smog from the LA basin would gather and settle in for a nice, long retirement. During the summertime, we would play outside from morning chores to dinner until our lungs became so inflamed from the toxic air that if we tried to take a deep breath we would cough uncontrollably. Smog-lung remains a recurring, vibrant part of my childhood memories.

But you know what is not part of those memories? (I marvel even as I think of it.) Wildfires. I’m sure they were there since wildfires kind of come with the territory around here. My siblings assure me that I was not paying close enough attention. But if they had been as common as they are now, or as devastating, surely they would have left more of a mark. I would remember the smoke as I do the smog. If I had had to scoop ash out of the swimming pool, or hose down my roof, or flee with my family with only the things we could carry; if I had stood in my driveway and watched as fire raged down the mountain from Big Bear through Barton Flats toward my neighbors’ homes; if my friends had been displaced, their lives turned upside down by a raging inferno, surely I would remember that. But I don’t. This is new. This is different.

Climate scientists have been predicting for years that it would come to this. They warned us that a warmer planet would result in more intense weather phenomena. Perhaps like me you watched An Inconvenient Truth with a healthy dose of skepticism; but at the same time I remember leaving the theater and thinking: “Perhaps he is just a reactionary, but at the same time, the downside of trying to do something about this is negligible compared to the risk of doing nothing. Why wouldn’t we at least try?” Now here we are, almost 20 years later, and Al Gore looks more and more like one of those old-timey prophets who the people ridiculed and ignored. Some still do.

Here in the present, circumstances were ripe for devastation coming into this week: Two years of heavier-than-usual rainfall brought wondrous growth to our hillsides and communities, but this year we’ve had so little rain that all of that new growth has been converted to kindling. When the atmosphere churned up dry, hurricane-force winds (double the intensity of our usual Santa Anas), it was a conflagration just waiting to happen. It’s hardly worth mentioning that 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded, breaking a record that was set . . . just last year. No wonder people keep using terms like “unprecedented” and “once-in-a-lifetime” to describe phenomena that are now occurring every year or so.

We Californians are not alone in our suffering. Around here, drought and fires are our thing. In the Southeast, it’s hurricanes and flooding, which year after year have become more frequent and more intense. Further north, they’re into “bomb cyclones” and the polar vortex. Everywhere it’s something. But what you won’t find is anyone who will claim that things were worse when they were a kid. If you find that guy anywhere other than some cable news rantfest, send him my way because I would like to check his alternative facts.

Meanwhile, this week it’s fires. Hundreds of people from Pacific Palisades to Riverside have lost their houses and probably most all of their possessions. I have friends and co-workers who have been evacuated from their homes and are spending tonight on a friend’s sofa or perhaps curled up on a cot in the local (but not too local) gymnasium. Just a block from my house, my neighbors remain without power going into a third straight day. 

Tonight Dana and I took Nacho for a walk through the streets of that darkened neighborhood. In a few places we could hear the chug-chug-chug of a generator doing its best to keep the cold cuts cold, but mostly it was just eerie and desolate—almost like a ghost town. Later, as we rounded the corner toward home, we saw other neighbors from a couple of streets over, heading into the home across the street to recharge their devices. In difficult times, it’s easy to find someone else who is willing to help out in whatever way they can.

You know what is not helpful, however? Pretending that what we can see with our own eyes is not actually happening—that it has ever been thus. It hasn’t. I know. I live here.

I hope, in spite of all of this, you are well. Please stay safe.

PW

_{Photo by Caleb Cook on Unsplash}