The October fires that we fear each year, fanned by the Santa Ana winds that whip the dry landscape into racing flames, have hit us hard. Whole areas of Sonoma County are devastated and the number of displaced, injured and missing people is growing daily. Some of these folks are people I know and love.
So far our farm, just a few short miles south and west of the burn area is smoky, but not in flames. I get the news second hand as I am home in Berkeley worrying, getting hints of the fire’s progress by how thick the overcast is here, how the air smells.
In days gone by the native peoples, following the natural cycles, did controlled burns on a regular basis to encourage new growth and help the natural ecology refresh itself, skillfully diverting the flames to protect the areas of their encampments. As stewards of their ecosystems they knew how to manage the land so as to maintain its health and productivity, and therefore their own.
We’ve unfortunately forgotten that wisdom and are now paying for our ignorance.
Many years ago, in the aftermath of a great forest fire in the Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur, the photographer Robert Boni and I decided to do a book on the re-emergence of a burned-out forest. We wanted to follow the stages of regeneration by going down to the burn area every two months over the course of at least one year with cameras and tripods, slogging through the ash and taking pictures of the process as life began to re-emerge from the cinders and the wildlife started finding their way back home.
We had the best time, getting totally filthy and watching the miracle of green life reassert itself in stages in the acres of burned-out forest. By the end of that year we were witness to a young forest eco-system pushing out of the ground with renewed vigor and growth, taking back the land.
It was like magic!
Then, in 1980, after the massive volcanic eruptions of Mt. St. Helens when hundreds of square miles of centuries-old forest were laid waste, Herb and I and the kids went there as soon as tourists were allowed back into the area. It was a heart-stopping moonscape as far as the eye could see, dead and silent.
But not altogether, we discovered as we hiked our way through the tuff. A bee buzzed by us, and following her zig-zag flight we discovered a bit if green poking through the ash, a prairie lupin. Tips of pine and tenacious grass were taking hold, bravely asserting their green selves onto the devastation. Once our eyes noticed the green we saw it everywhere!
Now, almost fifty years later the rich lava there fertilizes a new generation of forest eco-system, not identical to the old but in many ways richer and fuller than what was there before.
Sometimes it takes hardship to provoke change, like the shock of a healing crisis that jogs the body onto a path of readjustment and healing. It is a trial by fire, a hard kick in the pants that hurts like hell but provides the shock we need to reset our systems towards health. Maybe it is even the perfect metaphor for our social and political times with the runaway madness – like a high fever – providing the impetus for a necessary change.
A true healing crisis.
I grieve for all the shock and fear and personal loss around me, and I pray for every being who has unwillingly made such a sacrifice. I wish it did not have to be so, but confusion and the unexpected seem to be the name of the game, despite us.
I hope we can use the experience well.
I remember how quickly, after the big Berkeley/Oakland fire in 1989, the insurance companies and realtors got busy telling the burned-out homeowners what to do next, which was to re-build on the grand scale, sell high for a huge profit and, with big bucks in hand, move elsewhere. Suggestions by city planners and progressive architects to re-think the design so as to foster community by using the ‘clean slate’ as an opportunity for encouraging mutuality and connection, were ignored.
It broke my heart.
Now, all these years later, we have the opportunity again in Sonoma County. It just so happens that a group of us has been meeting for the last two years to start The CommonSpace Community Land Trust, with the idea of challenging the assumptions of private property and the speculative market. Our plan has been to start with the farm and to model shared, affordable housing on land held in the public trust.
We want to demonstrate another way of living together. In fact, we were just about ready to launch – this month!
Huge swaths of land in the County have been leveled to the ground by the fires, and the status quo has been definitely disrupted. People are grieving their losses and helping one another get back on their feet and the community, still in shock, has come together in powerful ways to help.
The time is Now, it seems to me, to plan boldly for new ways of living together, re-thinking how we humans might reconfigure community from the rubble of the past. This is not the first time we have built new lives on top of the ruins of the old – over the centuries probably more times than we know – and we have a chance to surprise ourselves with our creativity.
Thanks to Darryl, Kate, Cassandra, Jerry, Sara, Dan and Eden, the folks I’ve been meeting with to create the CommonSpace CLT, I know firsthand just how much fun it can be!
It’s an ancient story that the Phoenix rises from the ashes, bold and beautiful!
Alive and new!
May it be so.
