The only way to move forward is to look back. The only way to know the future is to know your history. The only way to adapt is to change, and right now, the world is changing fast.
While most of the residents of Southern California were locked inside their homes in 2020 and 2021, I took it upon myself to be outside as much as possible. Suddenly, the world wasn’t in the middle of a pandemic. Trails were closed, but less popular wilderness areas were open. I gathered all of my backpacking gear and eventually put all of my apartment dwellings into storage. I had a Wi-Fi hotspot, my Rav4, and an insatiable urge to travel the rugged terrain of the Southwest. I had also left the area during that time because some of my usual camping spots were destroyed by fire.
I remember the Bobcat fire that erupted and burned down the trees and all the vegetation around my favorite hiking spots during the lockdown. All I saw for weeks when I would come back to civilization to check the mail in Southern California were orange polluted skies and disoriented wildlife stumbling into the suburbs. The 2020 wildfire season in California was the largest in the state's modern history, with about 8,648 fires burning around 4,304,379 acres or more than 4% of California's land. The fires caused over $12 billion in damages, including over $10 billion in property damage, and 33 people died as a direct result of the fires.
I remember thinking at that time that this would be a normal occurrence as I learned all about the fire practices with the prescribed burns that took place before when the indigenous people of the land had a say in how to care for it. Some places in Northern California began inviting the original local stewards of the land to help advise them on how to prevent out-of-control wildfires in the future, but the land in Southern California was left to recover during our exceptionally wet winters until it all dried up again.
I saw the signs of a La Niña year (a climate pattern that refers to the cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, making the southern portion of the U.S. warmer and drier than average) as I hiked through dried leaves and brush this winter. With no precipitation, no snow in the mountains, and lots of wind picking up and painting my Rav4 with a constant layer of dirt, I knew fires were on their way, but I never truly imagined the type of devastation that would come to the urban areas of LA County.
A friend’s parents lost the house they had built over the years in the Mountain Fire in Ventura County this November. The home that had survived multiple earthquakes and that I had regularly visited over the past 17 years was completely erased. After bringing in the 2025 new year and taking down my holiday lights and decorations, the Santa Ana winds blew embers that grew multiple fires that consumed the houses of other friends in Altadena.
I unrolled the blowup mattress and checked my emergency go bag just in case as I listened to the rattling of window panes and the large sliding glass door all day and throughout the night in my bedroom. I texted friends who were packed and ready to go and offered the blowup mattress in the living room. Most of them were hunkering down until they received notice to move, while the rest found shelter at their parents’ houses. Their world’s, forever changed, as they grapple with what to do next.
As the fires rage on, all I can think about is the novel, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler and how the wildfires that took place on February 1, 2025, in a fictional city called Robledo, California, felt a little too on the nose for what is happening these first couple of weeks in January 2025. Butler´s novel anticipated climate disasters that are now happening worldwide, and climate change-induced disasters such as hurricanes, floods and drought are a part of America current reality. The novel explores themes of survival, resilience, and the power of community, but also change.
"Shape God" is a phrase used within the Earthseed philosophy depicted in the novel. It means to actively influence and direct change, as they believe "God is Change" implying that humans have the ability to shape the direction of change, essentially "shaping God" by their actions and choices. As insurance companies quietly terminate fire insurance in Southern California and a new administration hell bent on letting California burn enters office this month, we, the people in these communities, are left to help ourselves.
My heart goes out to all those affected by the fires across Los Angeles County and the surrounding areas. My home still has room for anyone else in need of shelter or supplies. I’ve downloaded the Watch Duty app for live updates and information, and I have my eyes on alerts coming in from lacounty.gov/emergency, but I am truly concerned for the near future.