In the movie Twister the main character, Jo, can’t understand why a tornado will take one farm and not the next. Skipping across the landscape in a pattern of chaos indecipherable to the human mind. I’ve never really been around tornados so it really didn’t mean that much to me, but today I couldn’t get the idea out of my head as we drove through the hills and valleys of southern California.
Last summer in the far north, we had our first experience with wildfires. We saw huge expanses of forest burnt to lonely echoes of their former selves. It was eerie to drive for miles and miles amongst the burnt remains of such majestic souls. We knew cabins and homes were probably lost. We heard stories of whole towns evacuated for weeks. It never really sunk in until today.
As usual, we searched google maps for roads ‘off the beaten path’ which lead us through the dry foothills of southern California. As we rounded a corner into another remote valley, we started to encounter the remains of a recent forest fire. It was sad and eerie, but similar to what we had seen up north. Then we started to notice blank spots where a house should have been, or a store, or a cabin. But these blank spots were in between houses and stores and cabins that were untouched by the flames, little onassis where the fire swerved or dipped. Why? Why did the fire take this house or that cabin and leave the next? Why swerve around one and take the next? I suddenly understood Jo’s statement from the movie.
Why one and not the next?
