Post Cards From Fire Season

For the past 28 hours or so, scores of Angelenos, myself included, have been obsessed with the Griffith Park FIRE. All Hollywood Strivers have at one time or another glanced up towards Griffith Park's two most iconic monuments, the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory, to affirm our paths to glory or confirm our creeping sense of disillusionment.











Plus, as strivers everywhere do, we LOVE to see ourselves in the national news. I felt a tickle of pride today when I read an article in the New York Times about the fire. New Yorkers, indoctrinated in the gospel of "thou shalt know no other Park but Central Park, for there is no greater urban Park", woke up to a tidy, front page morsel about the lesser known, but no less great Griffith Park, Griffith J. Griffith's beloved but accursed gift to the city of Los Angeles. We've got your cultural monuments, endless hiking trails, gorgeous views(on windy days, anyway), campgrounds, gardens, a zoo, and Hollywood pedigree right here! Finally, a little credit where credit is due. So what if it's because it's on fire? We Angelenos instinctually grab our moments in the sun where we can, how ever they get tee'd up.

Griffith Park is always present at the borders of my consciousness. I can look out on it's scrubby green hills from my 15th floor office suite and from my front porch. And like many, many Angelenos, I've watched toddlers scream in ecstacy and terror on aging ponies at the Pony Rides, eaten my share of hot dogs at graffiti'd picnic tables, jogged and hiked its canyons, explored the Bronson Caves and I've seen all the way to the Pacific from the decks of the Observatory. And I've seen it burn twice this year.
When I left work around 6:45 yesterday, the consensus of the local news media was that the fire was under control. Traffic, shockingly,was a breeze as I made my way in the 90-degree heat to a reading of a play which was fittingly set in Hell. 4 1/2 hours later, I emerged from the literary inferno and drove home to be confronted by the literal inferno, reinvigorated and still blazing about a mile and a half away. I grabbed my camera and took this picture from my front porch:

I realize it's hard to make out much. Just imagine you're standing on a hillside looking out over the city, and the warm scent of burning eucalyptus and chapparal fills up your nostrils, a light rain of ash is illuminated by the street lamps, and the occasional column of flame curls over a ridge as the low thrumming of helicopters provides a ceaseless soundtrack. The sensuality of it -- the warm, heavy air, the rhythmic rotor blades,watching the fire from a distance -- was sort of, well, lulling. Sure, I worried for the evacuees, the fire fighters, the animals at the zoo and all the wildlife that were doubtlessly forced out of the park or worse, trapped by the flare up. But yesterday, as helicopters continued to fly over through the night, I dreamed of camping in a primeval forest as smouldering fires crept down distant mountainsides. As disasters go, this one was almost cozy from a mile and a half away.