The Los Angeles fires erupted on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Mysterious origins, probably the messy, overburdened utility lines, possibly arson, nobody knew — it just exploded, Los Angeles County and everything around it for hundreds of miles a tinderbox where rain hadn’t once fallen since May. An errantly discarded cigarette is all it might’ve been.
With Santa Ana winds clocking at up to 99 mph in Altadena, in the foothills of northern Pasadena, and the Pacific Palisades, including parts of Topanga and Malibu, a roaring wave of brushfire spun out of control, providing ominous fanfare to the transition of power that was to take place in Washington, D.C., less than two weeks later.
Four thousand acres burned just that first night. People were made aware of a rampaging blaze and were suddenly thrown into a panic, no time to even contemplate belongings or comprehend what was happening, barely even two minutes to find pets. Twenty-nine waited too long or couldn’t get out for other reasons.
Everything one owned and that a person could not leave with in their hands was, in more cases than not, lost to the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Pagosa Springs and the larger Archuleta County area are now part of the story. This is due to the successful and remarkable effort that members of this community, many of whom I am happy to know read this paper, made, contributing faith, monetary and material donations to an idea that could have just as easily and fairly been judged as foolish and abandoned.
I will tell you that upon approaching LA, arriving out of the Mojave into the flowing, surreal 14-lane highways, I did flush and become preoccupied deeply for at least a period of an hour or two with distinct feelings that I was Don Quixote himself, modern-day cognate, particularly doomed carrying over $18,000 worth of goods bought with donations — made by 100 different people from Archuleta County and nearby environs — who expected my valiance.
Somehow, Jonah (my son, 13, who I had pulled out of school Friday in order for us to even have a prayer of pulling this off) and I boned up, would have to invent the capacity to penetrate the outer chaos of this vast, inefficient city to find the wound at its heart.
We, so encharged, would have to sniff out with poise the hands to receive what it was we had brought, what everyone reading this paper had given us, and gather the story of someone afflicted terribly by all of this looking us in the eye to say thank you. And, Dulcinea, we only had one day to do it — Saturday, Jan. 26.
We parked the full truck and open, loaded trailer in a protected area on the property of a Marriott the night before and got a good sleep. The security staff knew what the cargo was and kept an extra eye: 1,400 units in a dozen large cardboard boxes of small batch, flavor-packed meals ingeniously packaged.
They were not cheap, but a reasonable discount was extended considering the intention. A business out of Durango uses “upcycled” produce from local farms, dehydrated. You pour boiling water (that’s all you need) into the tough, sustainable pouch and voila.
These are meals designed as the kind of thing you would bring on a long hike over a couple of nights — easy wilderness cuisine. They happened to have more than 1,500 on hand and were elated to imagine they could get the business during winter, their slow time of year. The product (the varieties included garden mac and cheese, green chili cheddar grits, Thai carrot slaw, golden oats, harvest green curry and rainbow pasta) — and they even donated a few hundred lattes — the perfect thing into which we might sink the lion’s share of the amazing amount of money we raised.
The product offered lent legitimacy to what we were doing. In addition to the considerable number of nonperishable meals we bought from them, a few freshly baked pecan pies from the bakery were bought (especially prized).
Also, we made stops in Durango and Barstow on the way to purchase enough clean and extremely comfortable-looking socks to fill two large plastic bins, tons of AA and AAA batteries, squadrons of lip balm, cough drops by the case and throat medicine (we had done our research about what was really needed).
I went for it and bought a Nintendo Switch with one Legend of Zelda game. I know this is controversial, but we were going hog wild and I became intoxicated by the idea of some kid really affected by sorrow about all that had happened being mightily affected finding out that such a towering act of generosity was even possible — some taste of redemption in a world that could also steal his or her home so cruelly.
In addition to all the great clothing, some toys, food and other helpful items had been dropped off at my address for the effort.
Pagosa Peak Open School sent out word and that precipitated the result of them coming by and making sure we were overdoing it, which was more than welcome. An extra-nice baby stroller, toiletries, further clothes, etc. They overdid themselves. The bulging load we ultimately assembled and delivered to LA was ready, but we still didn’t know exactly where we were bringing it.
Heading down into Venice Beach the morning of the one day we had to deliver the payload, we became transfixed by the marvel of that seedy, dreamy place. We had to let the dog out for a run on the beach; she deserved it. An attempt to head straight into the center of everything, finding the central Santa Monica headquarters for fire and police, ended up fruitless — nothing but huge, sterile, closed-up administrative buildings. I was starting to feel some despair and decided to stop dilly-dallying and go with my original instinct: Zuma Beach, north of Malibu. This is where the fire crews were staging.
Zuma ended up being the ticket.
The people there, firemen and fire support, a camp of hundreds, maybe a thousand, had the marks of weariness and brotherhood on them. They were happy to see us and enjoyed hearing what we had to say to them.
When they got a closer look at what it was that we had actually brought them all the way from Colorado, I will tell you, it was about more than what we were saying. This was just what they needed, the perfect stuff. They meant it, and there was excitement about the pecan pies in their eyes. We had earned a spot with them and they took care to send us forward to a location in Hollywood where all meaningful donations were being accepted and organized for the victims in Altadena. We said our goodbyes and went that way.
As we began to head back east out of Zuma, saying goodbye to the ocean where we had seen a few dolphins and ran with them for a while, skittering sandpipers, pelicans, gulls, following the detour that it was necessary to take in circumventing the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) which was closed, I said to Jonah, “Hey, you know, let’s try something.”
We went back to Route 1, knowing that ahead the road would be blocked, being the main corridor passing through the off-limits areas, the epicenter of the worst of the ravage. After a few miles, we reached the fellow who was guarding the way. I rolled my window down and told him, as he looked at me and my son and our dog in the truck, that we were from a little proud town in Colorado and had driven all this way to help and still had high-quality items to deliver.
He gave us a wink, and for the next hour Jonah and I drove through scenes of charred cars, devastated landscapes, some things spared and other areas burned out horribly, scoured. There was a terrible stench in the air. This put the emotion of it in us. No one stopped us all the way through Malibu — or what used to be Malibu — to Hollywood, where they tell stories, make movies, endlessly look for something new to believe in.
In my experience, it’s the little things that are holy: The way someone smiles at you. The way those dolphins showed up at Zuma.
Our little town pulled something together to help a god-awful enormous city. Who could have believed such a thing? Well, we did.
In the movie “The Matrix” (1999), the characters Neo and Trinity infiltrate a “government” building to rescue Morpheus, yanking him out of the “building” by helicopter tether — one of the greatest sequences in all of movies, if you ask me. This is what it felt like for Jonah and I to make it through the fearsome highway system and gargantuan endlessness of LA, to deliver this gift.
It was a gift to them, but much more to ourselves, I believe. We also live in a place where wildfires pose considerable risk. It serves us well to take notice. We have given to these beautiful people who lost so much. What they, in addition to thanks, give us back is a warning.
Views expressed do not necessarily represent those of The SUN.
