Wind-whipped fires and desires

I’m NOT HERE TO DEFEND SURFING WHILE CALIFORNIA burns. I’m just here to tell you that plenty of people do just that, and most of them seem to be smiling.

It starts with those notorious Santa Anas, those east-to-west breezes that smell of sage instead of salt. Suiting up, you know that this hot, dry air is what provokes those fires in the hills, but you also know that when it reaches the coast, it becomes a coveted “offshore” wind, grooming the waves into steep, hollow walls that seem to hang forever, their translucent lips blasting feathery spray halfway to Catalina.

Maybe, paddling out, you suck in ash-laden air. Hanging on the board, you may gaze in at a skyscape thick with smoky haze. You know that when the next rain falls, the vast nastiness accumulating in Southern California’s pipes, gutters and culverts will begin slithering seaward.

But that’s a problem for later. On days like those early last week, when all those surf-friendly conditions arrived in tandem with a healthy swell from the south, surfers knew right away it was time for a little elementary anarchy. Water sports amid firestorms.

In Southern California, fire season has always been surf season too, especially if you’re not a firefighter, if nobody’s calling for volunteers, if your family is taken care of, if your classes have been canceled, if your union is on strike.

Take Mary Setterholm, a 48-year-old surfing instructor from Redondo Beach. She announced on her Web site last week that she’d be praying and thinking of fire victims while paddling out the next morning.

Off Redondo, ashes drifted onto the water and onto her board, and she wondered: “Oh, God, is that someone’s house?”

But before long, Setterholm was deep in the moment. “We just love the Santa Anas. It’s like the last kiss of summer before it goes away. It literally has its own sound,” she said. “I knew it when it hit, and I couldn’t wait.”

“A lot of things we love as surfers depend on disaster,” said San Francisco surfer and writer Matt Warshaw, who grew up in the water at Manhattan Beach and last month published “The Encyclopedia of Surfing.” Sebastian Junger’s “perfect storm,” Warshaw recalled, “produced great waves up and down the Eastern Seaboard.” And the Oakland Hills fire of October 1991 -- Warshaw has a clear memory of that.

He was 31 and living in Oakland. Authorities ordered him to evacuate. He threw two boards, a painting and a computer into his car and headed for Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Then he took out one of the boards.

“The minute I saw the surf,” said Warshaw, “I forgot that the hillside behind my house was on fire.”

Warshaw’s house survived. These days, in moments of cool, dry remove, he is able to stand apart from his surfing urges and say that “going surfing is about as selfish a thing as a human being can do.”

And surfers aren’t the only ones at the beach. On the weekend last month when the wildfires were advancing most dramatically, L.A. County lifeguards estimated 40,000 beachgoers between San Pedro and Marina del Rey on Saturday and 54,300 on Sunday. That day’s chores included 13 rescues.

The scene was similar in San Diego, even though the biggest fire of California’s recorded history was racing across chaparral and up the inland mountains.

“Our job hasn’t changed, except that we’re wearing masks while we’re doing it,” said San Diego Lifeguard Service spokesman Brant Bass. “The mask has to come off for the water rescues, but while we’re working outdoors, we have to filter the air somehow.”

I didn’t see any masks on my dawn-patrol polling between Point Dume and Santa Monica last Wednesday. In fact, I arrived just as the Santa Anas were flagging, humidity was rising and the breezes were beginning to push from sea to land again. Except for the thick haze, you’d never know that a big chunk of California had gone up in smoke.

At about the time the regional charred-acreage tally was passing 600,000, Peter Piper was pulling out his leashless red longboard at Topanga, then paddling out as the receding tide raked the rocks, stirring a sound like crackling kindling.

Just north of the Malibu Pier, John Dunn scanned the water through a pair of Ray-Bans as he pulled on a wetsuit. Dunn, 44, has been surfing here, and navigating the fire-water yin-yang of the Santa Anas, for more than 30 years. Though he grew up in Malibu, Dunn and his 7-year-old daughter moved in January to a cabin in Crestline, in the mountains above San Bernardino. A cabin with a wood shake roof.

The two evacuated in the fire’s early days, heading for friends and family on the coast with their dog and their computer hard drive. They forgot the dog’s leash and food, and there was no room for four custom surfboards. In the days since then, the fire had been racing, stalling and feinting.

“I thought we were going to be OK at first,” said Dunn that Wednesday morning. “Now maybe it looks like we’re not.”

The rest of his day would be filled with chores and status checks. But for now there was nothing to do but grab an old friend and a board, head down to the beach and make amends with the elements.

To e-mail Christopher Reynolds, read his previous Wild West columns and view his photos, go to www.latimes.com/chrisreynolds.