California Burning

Growing up in California I was constantly reminded that, at any given moment, life as we knew it was on the verge of a sudden and dramatic end. Once in elementary school, we were all marched outside to the playground and herded into little mobile trailer called (I think) an EarthquakeMobile. The inside of the trailer was made to look like a small classroom, with desks and a television, and a few groups of students entered the trailer at a time, sat at the desks, and had a simulated school day interrupted suddenly by an 8.5 magnitude earthquake, followed by a video on earthquake safety. Even though we'd been warned ahead of time what the EarthquakeMobile would do to us, and even though we knew that the earthquake was not real, the suspense was terrifying, as was the actual experience.

We needed to know about earthquake safety because the Big One was always looming on the horizon. The local news and elementary school curriculum assured us that it was long overdue and could and probably would hit us before we reached adulthood, and as a child I prayed (quite literally) that it would happen while we were out of state, maybe visiting my grandparents in Utah.

There were other worries too. One day at the beach, a trusted authority figure in my life (who will remain nameless and probably doesn't remember this anyway) decided an afternoon spent watching the waves was a good time to educate me about tsunamis. The discussion was well-intentioned and purely educative, but all I could do for the rest of that afternoon was stare at the waves and wonder if they were getting bigger, and I didn't feel at ease again until we got back in the car and drove home, well out of reach of any giant wave action.

And in third grade my teacher once told us about the flood that had struck La Crescenta several years before. "There were boulders the size of this classroom rolling down the hill," she told us. Twenty years later I have not forgotten that line. The north wall of our room was almost entirely windows, from cabinet-top to ceiling, and I stared out those windows on many a rainy day and imagined a boulder bounding down the hill, crashing through the glass, and obliterating our entire room and every child in it.

For the record, I was not a fearful child and most of my childhood was lived in complete physical security. Nevertheless, I had a vivid imagination, and it was never a question to me that I would move away from California someday and remove myself (and my future children) from the constant burden of pending apocalypse.

My family has been in California for 23 years now and this year was the first time natural disaster really came close to home. A short time ago, the famed Station Fire, which by the end burned 250 square miles of California hillsides, spread to the mountains right behind my family's home. My parents were evacuated, but because there was no wind to speak of, the fire burned very few homes (and none in my hometown). The only thing anyone really suffered was some smoke and inconvenience, and a bit of blighted scenery. When I went home a few weeks ago it was strange and sad to see the barren mountaintops behind our house. My parents and I went out on a Sunday drive and took pictures.

I felt awkward about this picture. My normal camera smile seemed inappropriate to the backdrop. I felt like I should look mournful or something.

A few weeks after the fire, my brother forwarded this clip to the family. It made me laugh.



I have accomplished my childhood goal of leaving the state, and now I live in a part of the country where I have little to fear from the elements. Michigan is too wet to burn, too far from a major fault line to think about earthquakes (though there have been earthquakes in Michigan), and the waves on the Great Lakes are barely big enough to notice. Life is calmer, though not nearly as interesting. It's a trade-off, but as long as my parents are still in California, I get the best of both worlds.