The Power of Nature : The Arsonist Defies Expensive Dream of Insulation

We search for some meaning now in the ashes. The allure of the canyons was their insulation--an urban luxury that only the rich seem to afford. In the canyons you could live in the city and escape from the city. You could live above the city and watch the city. In the canyons you could build a glass house or a swimming pool or put your house on stilts--construct whatever you wanted--and defy the wilderness around you. And, yet, in the canyons civilized life proceeded within the wilderness.

Charles Manson had already changed the way many of us Californians feel about the canyons. If part of the glamour of the canyons was their civilized wildness, Manson changed our sense of the wild. He was more wild than any snake or coyote in those hills.

Now there looms the figure of the arsonist.

More horrible than the flames or the ruins these last weeks has been the suspicion at various fire sites that the mayhem was deliberate. The calm-voiced fire chief appeared on the TV screen and supposed that all the suffering, all the devastation, had been “deliberately set.”

I imagine the arsonist to be someone who listens all day to the rat-tat-tat news on the radio. I imagine the arsonist watches lots of TV and never forgets that the great world passes him by and ignores him. The knowledge taunts him with each news item. Dateline: Cairo, Sacramento, New York . . . President Clinton signed into law . . . Tomorrow’s weather after this commercial.

All during October, those awful TV news shows that feed on calamity and urban suffering were telling us that red alerts had been issued. The canyons were too dry. The Santa Anas were due. The fire danger was extreme. “The danger is greatest in the canyons.”

Friends of mine who live in the canyons say they have it both ways. Within the urban and hidden from it by the wilderness of brush or trees. Not to be disturbed, to live within an austere Walden-like nature in the city is the ultimate California lifestyle.

The arsonist may be a loner, but the arsonist is obsessed by the possibility of changing other people’s lives. In an odd way, the arsonist knows too well what the rest of us in urban frustration forget: No one can truly afford isolation.

Homeowners and businessmen have been known to hire arsonists for insurance money. And there is the kind of arsonist who prowls, often in packs, at urban riots.

The fires of Crenshaw and Normandie may have been hideous last year, but they were expressive of a different sort of mood than the fires of Laguna Beach or Malibu. Urban flames express urban hatred and adolescent anarchy (Burn, baby, burn!), but what sort of anger got expressed by the flames in the canyons?

Watching the fires these last weeks, one had to face the uncontrollable force of nature. Fire became wind. The figure of the arsonist running from the flames made human deliberation a grotesque partner with the uncontrollable within nature.

After the riots of 1992, the lifestyles of the rich and famous prevailed. What these riots could not accomplish was the disruption of complacency. The canyon fires would strike at the very possibility of isolation.

One imagines the arsonist setting about his errand--buying the can of gasoline or checking the flares in the back seat with prissy care. The arsonist must be methodical. The arsonist drives through the canyon--always observing the speed limits. If anything, the arsonist drives too slowly, looking in the rear-view mirror and then looking ahead for some place to be alone.

The car radio is on. Another scorcher in the Southland. No relief from the winds. Red alert.

The arsonist is searching for somewhere to stop. Be alone, which is what the arsonist must always be, though he is tempted by some possibility. His loner’s obsession: The arsonist toys with the notion that no one is alone, that one person can change the lives of hundreds, even thousands. He confounds the expensive illusion that we can insulate ourselves behind tall walls or gates or trees.

THERE! NOW! The fire is lit. The arsonist runs from his crime, panting, almost laughing with wildness, tears streaming down his face. Slipping down the canyon, fast as a coyote.

He rushes home to watch TV. He wants to savor the flames but instead he sees heroes--neighbors, strangers, firefighters rescuing each other. He wants the cameras to turn back to the flames, those licking towers, those bright tongues screaming down the canyon. (He sits laughing at the city that doesn’t know his name.)

The city is drawn together by the arsonist. The city learns the John Donne theme, yet again--no man is an island, blah, blah. Not wealth or the height of our gates can insulate us from one another. The arsonist knew as much when he set out on his mischief; but the truth of our shared lives in the city finally mocks his isolation.

Rat-tat-tat. Helicopters. Screenwriters rescuing cats. Mothers protecting children. Firefighters risking their lives to protect houses they would otherwise never see.

The arsonist sits open-mouthed, discontent, alone.