On Altadena
My childhood home burned down — for the second time.
Last Wednesday, my childhood home in Altadena burned down — for the second time.
The first time it was my fault; I accidentally left a burner on in the kitchen, went out to the video store with my mom and sister, and came down to find the street blocked off by firefighters, our house partially destroyed. It was the fall of 1999, and I was 16. Thank the Lord we were covered by insurance, and the home was rebuilt, and my family never spoke a harsh or unkind word to me about it. People were very kind to us in that time, and the rebuilt home was spacious, airy, light-filled — a warm refuge looking north onto the rumpled corduroy shapes of the San Gabriel mountains.
My parents sold that house five years ago, and moved up to Portland, where I live. That house burned down once more in last week’s Eaton Fire, along with three other homes I lived in: the Pine Street house I lived in from Preschool to 2nd grade, the rental home I lived in as a teen while my house was being rebuilt, and the Wapello Street home I lived in in my mid-twenties. All gone, along with the homes of my neighbors and family friends, and beloved local spots, etc.
It all kind of feels like an immense memento mori. Like seeing centuries’ worth of destruction, the ravages of time, playing out within the span of days.
One of my most potent childhood memories is that of spending countless hours in the midcentury dreamland that is the Altadena Central Library, and so it is with great relief that I found out the library survived. The library is set on Christmas Tree Lane — a long avenue of immense deodars that are lit up every year. My mom would take me for walks along it when I was little and tell me of dinosaurs living there — we called it Dinosaur Lane.
A few years ago, I wrote the paragraph below about how those trees functioned for me as my first exposure to the idea of the forest. The forest has been one of the central themes of my writing and of my creative work in general, reflecting how I view the Lord’s hand in the cosmos and our place within it — and I know that partially links back to Christmas Tree Lane.
First Forest
I remember the deodar trees by the Altadena Library — tall, venerable figures, set darkly against star-strewn skies, like sentinels. A kind of twilight gathered beneath their feet, upon a bed of shed needles, a carpet slowly dissolving into the earth, holding within it the promise of fungi and hidden life. The trees were for me the original forest, an archetypal wood that set the stage for any number of forests since: the Angeles National Forest, Big Bear, a lone miniature grove on the CSUN campus, Big Sur, the Redwood Coast, and now, lying beckoning a mile away from my front yard, in full view every twilight, the misty outline of Portland’s Powell Butte, a tract of ancient Pacific Northwest forest, still filled for me with all the promise of those first trees I knew.
As always, thanks for reading. If you feel moved to help someone in Altadena, here’s a GoFundMe for a beloved family friend, Lorraine Greaves, whose house burned down a few days ago. She’s a godly and kind woman, a widower, and she and her son Daniel are in a tough spot.
If you like this newsletter, please do tell a friend. And if you want more, may I humbly recommend to you my first novel, The Forest Museum.
