In November 2018, the town of Paradise was devastated by the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history. Five years after they first visited Paradise in the wake of that apocalypse, J. Matt went back to take the measure of the town’s rebirth, and to consider what the Camp Fire continues to mean for those living in the WUI (wildland-urban interface). There’s much to mourn here, but there’s also hope for how we might fare in the face over ever-increasing wildfire risk—and the solace we might find in one another.
The first flowers to bloom in Paradise after the Camp Fire were daffodils, a North African species widely hybridized. True: these flowers are not native to this place in the Sierras, any more than contemporary Paradesians are. But the town is returning here, perhaps even blooming, because it is a place: a community with a history. It is a town being rebuilt on the ashes of catastrophic failure. It may not work. Nobody I spoke with saw self-sustaining tax bases and reliable economies as faits accomplis. The lessons of Paradise are incomplete, as are revisions to the ways we live, everywhere, in the face of global warming. Our history of living on earth is proving to be not-great. But it is the history we have, the one we must carry into the futures we make for ourselves.
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