Notes From A Burning House

Stepping outside the Elephant Asylum Theatre in Hollywood, at half-hour before my show, eyes and throat sting from the smell of smoke, rolling into the Los Angeles basin from the 20,000-acre wildfire near the San Fernando Valley.  We have an eerie sunset Thursday night: grey and fiery red, like a sunset eclipsed by a stone castle.   

The last time I smelled smoke like this was during the simultaneous wildfires in Simi Valley and San Bernardino in 2003.  I remember the morning I woke up in Orange County to a snowfall of white ash.  As I brushed it off my car’s windshield I thought, “This is Rancho Cucamonga.” 

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            The I-15 penetrates heavy fog (especially through the Cajon Pass) into the mojave. 

The desert actually features many characteristics I would look for in a pastor.  It maintains a powerful silence and receives everyone and everything without judgment.  We explode atom bombs there, and it is not moved.  It is a haven for all kinds of misfits and rebels, but all is forgiven there in the rawness with which life and death are transacted there – by humans, by kangaroo rats and sidewinders and mice, by the creosote bush and desert grasses and Joshua trees.   In the Mojave, beauty and indifference intermingle; it seems to have personality or wisdom or something, perhaps existing only in my imagination.  At any rate, there is no nonsense.  The desert has been around for a while, accommodating everything with an unimpressed silence.   

At the lonely desert town of Baker I turn onto Kelbaker Road - a long, paved road that runs right through the middle of the Mojave National Preserve.  After 43 miles, there is a turn onto a dirt road that takes me to the foot of the Kelso Dunes. 

The Kelso Dunes are California’s highest sand dunes: they reach 600 feet over the desert floor, flanked by the Providence and Granite Mountains, and looking over an ancient sand field known as the Devil’s Playground.  It is a strenuous climb.  The fringe-toed lizards that scramble around the dunes are equipped with their own natural snow-shoes, but for humans the ground is tough – especially for the highest tenth of the dunes, which are nearly vertical.  At that height, one begins to feel the odd, corkscrew winds that blow across the desert, picking up sand, and carrying it into the air.  When the wind hits the Granite mountains, it goes straight up, dropping sand back on top of the dunes. 

The top comes to a point, and there is a sheer drop to the desert floor below.  It is like reaching the edge of a world.  The wind tries to take my beloved suede cap, my glasses, and even me.  Sand blows from more than one direction into my clothes, my bag, my eyes and ears.  The wind sings through the Granite Mountains, almost like human voices.  I straddle the entire desert on top of this dune, yet I feel fragile.    The sky over a desert is open and one feels completely unprotected.  My existence is a privilege that is not guaranteed for one moment.  On the way back down, I fall and roll as if the desert were playing with me.  I howl back at the mountains and am heard without ceremony. 

Much later, at the base of the dunes near my car, I empty two cups of sand out of each of my boots.

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            In smoky Hollywood, I have come straight from work and am still wearing a bow tie.  Shannon, who works at the theatre, sees me and greets me by saying, “Ah, you look sexy!”              

“Why, thank you for saying so,” I say with a bow.

“No problem,” she says and then puts the knife in:   “I love geeks!” 

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            Waking up in a sweat – it is hot this morning.  Can the Santa Ana winds, the warm fall winds that waft in from the desert and stoke the wildfires, be breathing on us so early of a morning?  Before I consent to get up and ring the bell, rousting the other Zen Center residents from their sleep, I nestle among the hot blankets and reminisce for a moment about somebody’s sleepy voice.

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