Fire as a Call From the Past
an essay on wildfires from October, 2019
As we sat in the meadow, the smoke nestled into the valley like a coastal fog. Or like a head of grey hair resting on an old pillow. It lingered in the valley, clouding the idyllic vision of the valley I was so excited to see. But the smoke left at night. We could see the stars then, mixing at the tops of the cliffs with climbers headlamps as they prepared to sleep, suspended, beside the rocks.
My friend Alyssa told me that the day brings the winds into the valley and pushes out at night like a tidal current. The temperature rising and falling dictating the days in the valley. There does seem to be something large and oceanic about the valley, the alpine glow making the rocks change from a sleeping grey to an awakened coral at dusk. Washington Column, Half-Dome, El Cap, and the rest of the sheer faces of the valley look like chopped waves frozen in an instant to be preserved. But this place is not preserved. It is not still. No place with heat and winds and life crawling over it can truly remain as it is forever. The wind coming and going is a daily reminder of this.
The alpine glow disappeared to return the next night as the tide of smoke went out. But this day the valley was still thick with the smell and the lingering haze of smoke. The Briceburg fire, just west of Yosemite which closed the highway 140 entrance into the park and was contained on the 23rd of October, was 3,000 acres when I was in Yosemite. And that was on its second day. A large fire, though not as large as we are coming to expect of the fall fire season. Not as large as the two still burning Getty and Kincade Fires. But still, the smoke rested heavy in the lungs of tourists and workers in the valley. Ash rained down from the sky. I closed my journal as my friends and I sat in the meadow looking at all the climbers on the many faces of El Cap. In less than a minute the small black book was covered in the speckles of once living plants. The ash looked like stars on my journal.
This was my first time in Yosemite Valley. I used to love John Muir but have grown weary of his blind idealism and racist tendencies. I still love conservation, but its racist roots, and its very lofty notions of white supremacy, of not listening to locals, of instead killing and driving out those local people, have made me not believe so completely in its arguments. Because of these things, I came to Yosemite with my own reservations. But it was hard not to be shocked by the magnitude of it all, by its somehow innate way of humbling us. Yet seeing the smoke, being able to stare directly at the sun with not a spot lingering in my eye, I never forgot where we are today, and of the past that shaped it — bad forest management, a manifest destiny, violence, subjugation of many people, and the constant desire to ‘pioneer’.
This constantly moving and changing landscape, like the rest of California, exists in the now common experience of severe fires every year. A constant and shocking existential threat that we have to accept as the years pass and the changing climate exacerbates these issues in California.
And it’s important to also remember that this is how we experience climate change collectively in California — as visitors and residents. Our history, our poor choices as a nation, are right there in that smoke that we must deal with every year. It is the impact of fire that brings to reality the greater existential threat of climate change. Other places it is hurricanes, or tornadoes, or blizzards, or flooding. But in California the symptom of climate change and of our history is fires. There are more symptoms (flooding, drought, mudslides, etc) but, given the amount of attention the media likes to give to the fires, it’s important to remind ourselves of this fact — without our western influence, we would not be in this predicament today. The fires remind us, and tragically so, of our past.