after the fires
After San Diego County’s fires of 2003 moved into new areas, I was one of those tacky disaster tourists who went into some of the recently reopened areas. It’s interesting what motivates people to do things of the sort. An acquaintance with documentary photographer aspirations scours the world for disaster, and has gone to witness famine in Africa and Asia, and was in Banda Ache in 2005 not long after the previous December’s tsunami. What can you witness in times like that?
I wasn’t looking for human suffering. Also, I had no interest in the mawkish Hallmark-card exploitation of some weird sort of notion of human dignity that emerges in desperate times. I was primarily interested in the fires as one whopping dose of reality of the power of nature, just as I have this fascination of volcanoes and earthquakes, not for the terrors they can unleash on us humans, but more for a much-needed dose of human humility. I think that we humans are blisteringly arrogant as a species and need to be rattled into consciousness about our place in the universe.
You can make some of these discoveries while gardening, observing the world and uncovering your place in it. But I guess I’m dense enough that it takes something cataclysmic to give me the rest of the story. Dunno…maybe it’s the same kind of need that drives people to mountain climbing or NASCAR…
So there I went, out into the burn areas, mostly to the backcountry, but also around my neighborhood. Looking back at the photos I took I think that I was looking to find some sort of order or beauty out of the mess. Was it looking for some sort of reassurance? Or maybe something approaching acceptance? Making peace with the realities of the world?
La Jolla Panorama with Smoke I, Day 3, 2003.
Here’s the left half of a diptych taken on the third day of the fires from the top of Mount Soledad, a viewpoint that on other days gives you a view of the ocean, downtown San Diego and the mountains to the east. This was day three of the fires, with the flames now probably no closer than ten miles away. But that day most of what you saw was the air, thick with smoke and the color of burnt caramel.
“Tim Loves Julia” Rock, near El Capitan Reservoir, Day 3, 2003.
Taken the same day as the previous image, this was out just a couple miles from where the Cedar Fire began. With the winds blowing east-to-west, the air was surprisingly clear immediately overhead but the smell of ash was everywhere. This boulder with the graffiti was probably about as close as I got to looking at that human dignity thing. I wonder if Tim and Julia are still together. Or was this just some drunken midnight outing with a sixpack and a can of spraypaint?
My first tourist pictures turned into a small photographic series, The Fire Works. Over the course of several months I visited many areas that had burned and looked for the signs of change, restoration or recovery.
Mission Trails Park II, 3 Months Later, 2004.
After three months and a few rains things were still blackened, but the green was starting to come back.
Mission Trails Park VI, 3 Months Later, 2004.
Taken the same afternoon as the previous image, the signs of recovery are a little more subtle in this picture. Immediately after the fire the rocks were black. Now they’re washed white. In a large print of this image you can see little seedlings returning to the park.
Rock and Branches, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, 6 Months Later, 2004.
The Cuyamaca Mountains experienced some of the most intense burning. But add some time, sunlight and water and you end up with one of the more spectacular spring wildflower blooms I’d seen in a few years.
Hill with Wildflowers, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, 6 Months Later, 2004.
…And this is one of the last images I took in the series, the following May. With the majority of the pines in the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park wiped out, restoration was far from complete. It may take longer than my lifetime, and things will never be exactly as they were. But nature is doing what it does and doing it beautifully.
This project was a real eye-opener for me. You can read about the transformations that occur after a fire and appreciate the facts. Still, there’s nothing like getting out into the areas that were affected to give me a much deeper appreciation of the changes.
After 2007’s fires, however, after watching too many days of disaster coverage on television, I had no inclination whatsoever to repeat my post-fire surveys of 2003 and 2004. I stayed in the house, turned on the HEPA air filter I’d bought after the earlier fires, and tried my best not to let the horrific news coverage get to me. Sometimes you feel that a human being has seen enough.
Speaking of things that humans probably shouldn’t have to ever live through, let me plug a book by one of my recent coworkers, Paul Harris, who’s recently published Diary From The Dome: Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina.
Paul went as tourist to New Orleans, looking to spend a laid-back week taking in what the Southern city had to offer. Instead he ended up in the middle of Hurricane Katrina, evacuated to the Superdome along with thousands of the city’s residents who couldn’t find a way out of town. You’ve heard or read of some of what happened there, but Paul gives an especially harrowing account of the the experience. He saw and lived through things none of the press reported, including how being a white tourist gave you privileges that none of the majority black residents were offered. This book will open your eyes.
October 19 2008 04:07 am | Categories: art • landscape • photography • places | Tags: Cedar Fire • fire • fire ecology • Hurricane Katrina • Paul Harris
Greg on 19 Oct 2008 at 10:23 am #
I’m always impressed with how Nature will bound back after a burn, or other cataclysmic event, or even just the destruction caused by the blistering arrogance of humans which you mention.
Great photos, as always.