I am working today while the music of chainsaws plays in the background. Climate change makes the summers longer and hotter, which means the vegetation is already dried out, and though there will be no stopping the fire if it chooses to come here on the vagary of the winds and consume us, we are nonetheless trying, in the smallest of ways, to forestall that. Our house is surrounded by dense forest. It is entirely made of wood. When we moved in thirty-four years ago, we replaced the shake roof with a composite shingle that looks very much like the original shake in cut and color both and we annually trim the trees away from the house, but this time we are removing several (including an avocado) that are too close to the structure. A writer I very much like wrote a novel back in 2000 which projected to the preposterously advanced year of 2025, in which the climate is the story, alternating between deluges and wildfires. Now we are living it. Every time I hear a siren I am hoping that it’s emanating from an ambulance and not a fire truck. (People die of heart attacks, more’s the pity, but these trees and this house prop up my soul.)
So the chainsaws sing and I grit my teeth, my work stalled and the branches falling, and hope for the best. Please refer to my novels, "The Tortilla Curtain" and "A Friend of the Earth," as well as the short story, “Ash Monday,” for a more considered look at the repercussions of climate change on the Golden State of California and wish me the best in a stochastic world. Wish me luck. Even better, wish me rain.