THE SOUTHLAND FIRESTORM: A SPECIAL REPORT : EYEWITNESS : A Panicked Call, a Trip to Remember

I have always loved Topanga Canyon, as much for its physical beauty as for the sense of a counterculture still innocently flourishing there. It’s a place where old hippies never die, they just roam the local market like graying and grizzled ghosts.

I’ve spent many months living in Topanga, housesitting for my friends Alan and Susan. It was Susan who called Tuesday morning to say she’d heard a fire had broken out in the area. She was alone, and she asked if I could come and get the animals--two cats and three dogs, including our dog, Frieda, who’d been staying with them.

My husband, Tony, and I left our apartment near Downtown right away, not really believing the situation was critical. But it became apparent as we drove west on the Santa Monica Freeway that this was no small fire. To the north, a huge, dense cloud of smoke rose in a mushroom shape--an apocalyptic vision. At the beach, I felt how hard the wind was blowing, and how hot it was. Heading up Topanga, we saw people fleeing. Clearly, the fire was close, and we felt we were driving straight into it.

We passed a woman parked by the side of the road--her car packed with boxes--weeping into her hands, as if she could go no farther. I began to feel terribly afraid. We came around a curve and saw smoke swirling furiously up ahead, swelling into a monstrous shape and lit from within by a lurid orange light. I knew then the fire was very, very near.

At Topanga Center, we ran into gridlock--a sea of mired cars, some trying to get up the canyon, some trying to come down. Tony pulled to the right, drove up the shoulder, and we forced our way through. Someone stopped us and asked where we were going, and when we told him, he shook his head and with a weariness in his voice said, “You’ll never make it.”

But we did, though I have never before felt such fear, a kind of end-of-the-world fear. People were streaming toward us, escaping the fire, leading horses, riding horses, in cars hastily packed.

When we finally reached our friends’ house, they were in the driveway, loading their car. We said very little in greeting. The dogs had been tied to trees and we quickly got them into our car, along with one cat. The other cat had disappeared.

From the porch, we could see the fire burning down a ridge toward us, flames leaping and twisting to incredible heights. We took one last look at the house, said goodby, then ran to our cars and joined the flow pouring out of the canyon.

At one point, we came upon a man in a truck. Three horses were tied to the bumper and he was driving slowly, trying to pony the horses along, but they smelled the fire and panicked. One reared back, snapping his halter, and ran off. I felt I really ought to stop and help. But I didn’t. I simply couldn’t. Even then I wondered if the fire had burned across the road below us, cutting us off.

We finally made our way down to the ocean and pulled over and waited a while. Susan and Alan were remarkably calm. I felt a little stunned, slightly dazed. Just a small reconfiguration of the combination of elements we tend to call luck and we all might have perished. When we drove from the house, I didn’t give it much chance of surviving. But, amazingly, it did.

I won’t see Topanga for a while. I’m heading back to Idaho, where I now spend most of my time.

But I can imagine what Topanga will look like the next time I do see it.

I envision hills furry with new growth, the ridges of stone rising from the greenness with the whiteness of bones.

And I can imagine, in some future time, that a holy flood of feeling might gently overtake me, as I step once again onto that land.