Smokey Days

I was doing some exercises in the living room yesterday, and thought to myself Hey, did I leave a burner on?

Only to realize, a moment later, I hadn't cooked anything all day.

Wildfire season had been doing its thing in Southern California, but the direct L.A. area had been spared – until this weekend.

Orange county is burning. Sylmar, in the northern Valley (only a few miles from where I work and many of my friends live) is quickly turning into ash. Oprah, Rob Lowe, and Christopher Lloyd all have homes in the danger zone.

But we're safe in West Hollywood. I guess being in the middle (or closest thing) of the L.A. metropolitan region has some benefits. When the wildfires rage, we all smell the sticky, hazy odor of burning homes and buildings, cars get a little ashy, our temples may pound from the god-knows-what we end up inhaling, and the sunsets turn scarily-beautiful red, while lasting twice as long as normal. We don't lose homes or life, just oxygen and sleep.

So yesterday, as I walked the neighborhood doing shopping, smelling the burnt California in the air around me, I felt thankful that amidst the personal tragedies these fires bring, where on literally all sides the country is burning, where peoples' lives are falling apart less than 20 miles away, ravaged by a force of nature that has utterly destroyed so many cities in the past, my biggest concern was the odor in my nostrils, and the overpriced chicken at Whole Foods.

As Jamie points out (with a fantastic picture of the fires, I might add – where'd you get that, Jamie?), we don't fight fires that much smarter than we did 100 years ago. Bigger tanks, airborne deployment, and occasional chemical aid pretty much round out the tactical advances. Wildfires still rage, and people braver than I run up to the edge of them with as much H₂O as they can deliver. What worked for the Athenians works for us.

But we've gotten damn good at insulating ourselves from the hot stuff.

Did I leave the stove on?