I Think I Like It Here

We were in Grant’s Pass, Ore. Outside it was raining. Inside, Malibu was burning.

There was ironic juxtaposition there. A blustery storm was bringing winter to the Northwest in a big way.

Snow iced the passes, fog smothered the coastline and rain rattled the windows of the Orleans Motel.

We had just rolled in out of the storm, tucked into our room like bears in a cave, watching the wild weather with mixed feelings of wonder and anxiety.

Then I turned on CNN. Fire raged through nameless mountains, blasted by winds that stirred the flames into a cosmic witch’s brew.

It could have been any fire anywhere in the world. There’s a sameness to this kind of disaster. Elements unite us. Fire blows in the wind with identical ferocity here and everywhere.

But two words that flashed on the screen made this inferno personal. One of the words was Malibu. The other was Live.

We stared at the images, Cinelli and I, in silent anguish, listening for the details that would tell us how close the flames were coming to our home a couple of canyons away.

We’ve lived in the Santa Monicas for 25 years, have survived half a dozen brush fires and know how quickly flames as high as heaven can race through dangerously dry chaparral.

But this time we were 750 miles away.

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October is not a good month to leave the mountains of L.A.

It’s the time of the Santa Anas, the hot, dry winds that sweep down from the Northeast and lay an aura of uneasy anticipation over the canyons.

We listen for sirens when the Santa Anas blow and watch the mountainous horizons for smoke and sniff the heated air for the smell of burning wood.

But conditions were deceptively good when we left L.A. Autumn was in the air. There was fog on the coast and clouds were in the sky.

This vacation was to have been a working one, a few weeks off to create the elements of a new book, a time to get the house in order.

But there’s something about L.A. that, well, involves you even when you’re not out there covering it. We’re together on a kind of island that unites us in a tribal way. What affects one, affects all.

After awhile, caught up in events of the day, I found myself bearing everyone’s burden and knew I had to leave for at least a few days or end up lacing my apple juice with lithium. There’s a drumbeat to the city that leaves you bristling with energy, unable to let down.

So we headed northward into the loving rain. I’d forgotten what it was like to get rained on, to stand on a hilltop with my arms outspread and my head thrown back, tasting the distance.

It was a good rain, not a monsoon. When it rains in L.A. it’s a tropical disaster. Slides block roads and homes slip down hillsides turned liquid. Oregon’s was the kind of rain that invigorated without killing.

I was just beginning to relax in a different biome when I turned on the television news in Grant’s Pass. And I saw the flames.

*

Human helplessness is an element of firestorms. There are fewer instances of greater futility than standing on one’s rooftop with a garden hose in the face of the roaring, howling, wind-driven flames of a mountain fire.

But similarly unrewarding is sitting in a motel room with no way to do anything and wondering if the flames that have burned through Malibu will suddenly turn eastward in wild caprice toward Topanga.

What to do, make a mad dash for home, me on a plane and Cinelli in the car, or wait it out? Telephone contact was difficult. When we finally got through we heard news of diminishing winds. We’d wait it out.

The next day conditions were even better. While homes in La Costa, Lemon Heights and Malibu lay in ruins, the Santa Anas had abated. But more danger lay ahead. New winds were due. We continued our trip with trepidation.

Surprise factors influence decisions. Standing in the rain at a gas station in Crescent City, I began a conversation with a man who turned out to be a retired L.A. County firefighter.

For many years he’d been stationed in Malibu and knew what firestorms were all about. He said to me as we parted, “Finish your vacation. The boys down there will do the best they can.”

The boys were superb, as they always are. We rolled into L.A. on a day as bright as silver with no trace of smoke in the air. A slight breeze was blowing autumn leaves over the front deck, the cat meowed a greeting and the sweet embrace of home was waiting.

I’ll remember the soothing rains of Oregon for a long time, but this is where I belong, and this is where I’ll be, where the drums never cease and the spirit bristles.

Al Martinez can be reached via the Internet at al.martinez.@latimes.com