EXCERPT from Small Matters: A Year in Writing The Fire’s Long Afterward The hillside is no longer the surface of the sun. The flames that once shot four stories high, the ones that had lasted five days somewhere else and finally surprised us over the ridge and down onto the hillsides of Claremont, have passed. We are no longer afraid of what might happen, that everything will be lost: the homes, the boarding school, the Alzheimer’s assisted-living community. We have either lost everything by now or we have not. Sifting through the ashes, everyone is thankful for something, for small mercies and big ones. Days earlier, when the Grand Prix Fire had not burned more than 60,000 acres, when it had not merged with another great fire, the talk was of Santa Ana winds, no rain since June. When high temperatures and low humidity didn’t pan out authorities looked for an arsonist. Later, the arsonist theory was dropped for lack of evidence. Still, the first mention of an arsonist sets jaws, jams teeth against teeth. There is talk of lynching and things worse at the evacuation center. None of this is repeated in the company of the American Red Cross. When I meet the first evacuees at 1:30 a.m. at the Alexander Hughes Community Center they cannot speak of losing everything. They bring with them their animals two by two: dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits and turtles. Breathing is difficult because of the smoke, because they are gathering their thoughts. I meet the woman who sells real estate, the woman whose face can be seen on the carts in the grocery store, and later an older woman I do not know wandering around the parking lot. The older woman is explaining to me that her husband is in Phoenix and that she is alone and too weak to gather valuables from her house. She is explaining to me that her husband will be angry because she has saved so little. It does not matter who you are, when talk of losing everything is first introduced both parties must turn away. Another woman I meet at the evacuation center tells me this is like war. She is talking about the spotty news reports, the way news of a war is late and useless to anyone in the middle of it. News of war is useful to people far away, people who are having dinner with lost friends. All day the news reports of the Grand Prix Fire have been late and inaccurate. Reporters have inverted the names of places and people. The Webb Schools have become an evacuation center instead of a place to be evacuated. The schools are assigned buildings they do not possess: Taylor Hall is the evacuation center where everyone from the school must go; it stands at the corner of Scripps and Indian Hill Boulevard. At 5:00 p.m. there is a final update at Alexander Hughes Center. It is reported that some citizens involved in the Grand Prix Fire feel their houses were abandoned to save others. There is shouting, accusations, unsettled feelings. What is talked about cannot be divided into argument and answer. It has no sides. There is only dead-tired suffering, weariness, unspoken sorrow. It’s nearly 9:00 p.m. the night after and I am sifting through the fire’s path, kicking around the ashes of what was mine and what is still. The canyon below me is a field of smoldering coffee grounds: the grasses, chaparral, palms, oaks, pines burned to dust. Scores have lost their homes, beautiful homes, homes where sparkling parties once filled their grounds. I wonder if there will be more talk of rebuilding or of what was lost. A few days later two governors come to Claremont, the old governor and the new one. They bring with them camera crews and reporters on deadline. There are speeches given through microphones, talk of courage and determination and federal assistance for those who need it. The old governor is smiling but distant, oddly out of place among those he has governed for so long. It is the new governor for whom the people clamor, the movie star, the one who has played a single part in many movies. Near him, a line forms for photographs and handshakes. In the end, I believe it is not possible to lose everything. There is always the opportunity for fortune rerouted, a happy ending. The realtor did not lose her house, everything was saved. And there are others. The lost woman, the one I found wandering the parking lot whose husband was in Phoenix, she must have, surely, found her way home. 11/14/03	Excerpt from Small Matters: A Year in Writing The Politics of Trees Their slender beauty catches me by surprise, unsettles me: the dark-barked jacarandas and the boys. I watch over them both, my small orchard of twelve trees and my two sons. It’s May when we synchronize our business: blooming and birthdays. When the jacarandas are late blooming, I worry about trouble. I worry a coyote will come down from the foothills and take a cat, about global warming, that good luck will turn bad. You cannot console me with your rational talk of a late, cold spring. But this year my lavender street trees stick to their schedule. They bloody the sidewalks on time. They paint Indian Hill Boulevard purple, and Santa Clara Avenue, too. I encourage my sons to care about our municipal trees, to seek comfort in their dappled shade. I do not tell them, but it is nonetheless true: if a blue blossom falls on their head their lives will be filled with great fortune. It is widely known you cannot seek good fortune; it must find you. I am an amateur arborist, a jacaranda lover. My research is lonely, but satisfying. There are now more than 50 known species of the jacaranda tree. Like everything, they were once native somewhere, to Central America, South America, the West Indies. It is unfair to say they are so prolific they are considered a weed in some countries of the Southern Hemisphere. Like democracy, jacaranda trees flourish in reasonable weather. They grow from seed in warm climates. It is suggested, I read, their seeds be doused in boiling water to germinate them. In certain utopian environments it is reported that jacarandas bloom twice a year. For the record, I have never seen this. I have seen the jacaranda on the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, in Guatemala City at the edge of the airport, in the subdivisions of Los Angeles. I understand from photographs they line the streets of many African cities. Pretoria, South Africa is The Jacaranda City. No doubt, these trees have seen plenty of trouble. Still, unlike the sturdy California oak, they are not reliable witnesses, I believe. They are easily distracted by unsupportable arguments, by civil insurrection -- naïvely optimistic regarding the nature of man. Jacarandas are people pleasers. They are like all party drunks -- they like to trash the place. Finally, if you plant jacarandas too close to your house they will break up your foundation. They are fancy, candied trees planted for their flowers and killed for their wood. Jacaranda is the Brazilian word for rosewood. It is legal to destroy them to make fine furniture and musical instruments in every country in which they are grown. It is never argued that jacarandas make bad furniture. In Claremont, my 12 jacaranda trees are the result of a municipal mandate. They are “street trees.” They grow 30 feet tall and just as wide; they require at least 40-50 gallons of water every other week when mature. They are deciduous or evergreen. Mine are evergreen. It is hard for me to admit it, but they may be the most stunning result of a municipal meeting ever recorded. Besides the jacaranda, the City of Claremont has planted over 23,500 other street trees. Their care is tracked by computer: the magnolias of Mountain Avenue are monitored; the liquid ambers of 11th Street are watched. Claremont has been named Tree City USA for 19 consecutive years by the National Arbor Day Association. We’re a city of planners and always have been. We’ve argued over the picking and packing of citrus, over roundabouts and regulations since the turn of the last century. We’ve wrestled over the placement of roads and stop signs and street lights. Even our first official vote split us down the middle: 75 citizens voted in favor of incorporation and 49 voted against it. Because I am thankful for my municipal trees, I’ve been thinking about Claremont’s General Plan. Just now, committees and commissions are getting together to map out Claremont’s future. Our city’s General Plan is now being updated after some 25 years. It’s a document that when finished, should contain our visions and dreams for this 13.5 square miles we call home. The Plan covers land use, housing, conservation of open spaces, noise, safety and alike. I imagine it was at some such commission or committee meeting that street trees were born, that someone said let’s plant jacarandas on Indian Hill Boulevard. Either way, as the proverb goes, someone did once plant a tree under which they would never sit. It is, at the very least, what I can do for those that follow me. 5/21/04