"As the Earth warms and the drought deepens, a network of biologists and conservationists in California are building a 'Noah's Ark' to protect wildlife from extinction by fire and heat." -- LA Times, August 18th, 2021.
As I write this, a massive wildfire continues to rage through Northern California as an evacuation map has been released to locals. This follows The Dixie Fire, the largest of the major wildfires burning in Western U.S. states that have seen historic drought and weeks of high temperatures and dry weather that have left trees, brush and grasslands as flammable as tinder. While 2020 was the largest wildfire season recorded in California’s modern history, 2021 is off to a daunting start.
California was always the world’s idea of paradise (until perhaps the city of that name burned in 2018). Hollywood shaped our fantasies of the last century, and many of its movies were set in the Golden state. It’s where the Okies trudged when their climate turned vicious during the Dust Bowl years – “pastures of plenty”, Woody Guthrie called the green agricultural valleys. John Muir invented our grammar and rhetoric of wildness in the high Sierra (and modern environmentalism was born with the club he founded).
Personal, direct effects of climate change—having to conserve water during drought season, install air-conditioning to combat rising temperatures, and clear vegetation from yards and gardens to protect against wildfires—are the new normal in California. Some residents are wondering, is California still California when our weather becomes an adversary rather than an ally? What is California for when summertime, the season in which the Golden State once found its fullest luster, turns from heaven into hell?
The increasingly hostile weather is straining social relations and disrupting economics, politics and mental health. Extreme weather events like wildfires have been linked to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation. The sound of a siren can be a triggering event for anyone who has experienced the incineration of their home. The threat of evacuation, and reliving the horrifying memories of fleeing a previous inferno, have created a nightmarish present -- and paint a grim picture of our future. Mental struggles are also common among wildland firefighters who are being exposed to horrendous conditions - entire communities destroyed, loss of human life, loss of wildlife, loss of landscape that we treasure.
As one writer eloquently puts it: “We need a new word for that feeling for nature that is love and wonder mingled with dread and sorrow, for when we see those things that are still beautiful, still powerful, but struggling under the burden of our mistakes.”