To All the Trees in California

California with that delicious golden air, that expansive foreverness about it that ends before too soon.

I thought that I’d share a piece I wrote some time ago about the Caldor fires in Lake Tahoe in October of 2021. Its one of those pieces that I wrote that I never quite got into the submission circuit. Is it edited enough? Probably. For a long time I’ve been insecure that my work isn’t good enough for people to actually read it. I’m not sure if I’ve gotten over that wave entirely, but I do feel confident that I don’t care enough about capitalizing on my art as much as I’d hate for it to disappear forever and never to be read. Unfortunately, I was inspired to dig into my files last month to share with a friend who lives in Los Angeles and is grieving the loss of so much of the wild space they loved so much. Now, I’m sharing with you.

Thank you for reading.

I don’t know about the people who never pressed their noses up against a Ponderosa Pine as the sweet smells of vanilla seeped from the cracks, or never worked so hard to rub the sap out from between their palms, or never felt the expansion of their lungs exploding with that thing our parents like to call Fresh Air. I don’t know about the people who haven’t had the chance to gaze up at the trees, not just any trees, but old growth trees, and feel chills ache down their spine knowing that those trees are the generational teachers of patience. That those trees could be thousands of years old.

California with that delicious golden air, that expansive foreverness about it that ends before too soon. I know I come from a brand of California-bred, California-appreciating human-beings that knows those Coast Redwoods, those Giant Sequoias, those Douglas-firs, those Evergreens, those Oaks, and everything else in between.

I know about the Californians that have plunged their naked bodies into aqua pools in granite-sprinkled forests, who drank from glacier springs on mountain tops, who shouted from peaks and howled at the moon and the stars at the ceilings of this expansive land. I know about the Californians that have walked, trotted, skipped and ran along the sweet smelling paths weaving in and around all the different species of fauna, flora, and insect beings buzzing by in and around their ear-drums. I know about the Californians that retreat to the woods, and let out a collective sigh of relief once the traffic breaks from the constantly merging freeways. And to all the Californians that found a home here, because of those welcoming arched bridges and cliff sides with golden sunsets, and those that now have an unwavering standard of beauty that couldn’t possibly be upheld by another place. We tolerate our freeways, our traffic, knowing that there is a place that we can at once escape to. I know about the Californians that want to take that escape to their backyard, and tut their mouths when developers across the street need or want to cut down three or four Cypress trees in place of a new building, and it might create a rift in any potential to introduce yourself to anyone who might move in. When they do, you might think, ah, jeez. Not these people. I know about the Californians that know where to find the best wildflowers at peak season, or the ones that know how the air never smelled so fresh as is does by the ocean first thing in the morning.

I’ve heard the stories of what California once was before all the buildings and hotels, strip malls, condo complexes, metropolitan cities, and manifest destiny imperialism, and how there are slivers of what that used to look like. There are stories that in my hometown, when the Ohlone stewarded the land, that Grizzlies would hunt Elephant seals on the beach during their annual migrations. I can only imagine the sounds of the struggle. I can only imagine that the Redwoods were just at the beginning of their life cycle. I can only imagine why it all had to change.

I wonder if all those Coast Redwoods, Giant Sequoias, Douglas-firs, Oaks, Evergreens and everything in between would call themselves Californian, if they ever had a reason to speak our language. If their indifference to ownership indeed makes them more free than us, unknowingly stuck in a societal cycle. If the way they drop their acorns, their pinecones, their spores, is to remind us that the life cycle is seeped in each and every one of us.

Being a Californian might also mean that never getting to say goodbye to the trees in and around South Lake Tahoe and Emerald Lake will ache something fierce. How you never knew it might be the last time the sky is this crystal clear in the summer. How you wish that this year might be the last year they call the fire closing in on a beloved escape of yours, a mega-fire. How you might involuntarily flinch when a politician calls your city a “tree-city” with loose ideas for clear-cutting. How the word “acre” burns into your mind as an absent-minded measure of land and space, and how all you can think of with each passing day without rain, how impossibly terrifying that so much of it is as flammable as the lint in our pockets. Being a Californian might mean sitting on a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco, and commenting on the lovely day and coming to a slow and realizing bewilderment that it is the middle of November. Being a Californian might mean staying inside between twelve and four p.m. because, what, are you nuts? It’s so hot out there. Nope, haven’t had rain in months. Sprinkled for twenty minutes one morning in August, though.

It might mean never revisiting the thousand-ringed stumps at Inyo, never gazing up at those marvelous Redwoods in Eureka, or those sister Sequoias in Big Basin that you took that poloroid in front of with your mother. For all those moments that can’t be recreated, you wish that those moments with the trees can— and that those visions of twisted roots and vines only remains as an old, guarded secret locked away in our memories. It might mean that for all the acres burned, we want to take back our missteps, our misdeeds, and say I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’ll drive less and use less plastic. I’ll take responsibility because the chaosed nature of fire is out of my control, and I so want to feel in control of the five million acres. I’ll do better, I swear. I want to skip and saunter down the paths. And all of it, knowing that five million acres is the size of six and half Rhode Islands. And that was just in the last four years.

For what its worth, I take solace knowing that trees grow towards the sky, that the scorched earth is fertile grounds for their growth. I want my children’s children’s children to look at the redwoods and ask what life was like when we were alive—and yet, its hard to imagine what life is like without the ones that were burned away, because those so-called tree-cities, have given so much life. I can’t think of a silver bullet solution to make it all better, and maybe its too late for that delicious call to action that makes everyone hold their chin high with indignation and pride. But maybe, just maybe, we could let those new fertile grounds for growth, just be.