The Angora Fire in Tahoe jumped the fireline this evening, 3 days in and just when firefighters thought they’d seen the worst. Until last year, I always thought of Tahoe as some hideous frat boy puke fest tourist trap, and there are aspects of South Tahoe (like Harrah’s) that seem like a throw back to mid-70s Vegas, complete with rows of slot machines reeking of cigarette smoke and white trash desperation. Though to be fair, there is some great neon….
I realized how much I’d been missing all these years when I spent a week there last fall while on vacation with my family. We stayed in South Tahoe, and explored as much as we could in such a short period.
Lake Tahoe woke something up in me that had been dormant for a long time – a joy in nature that brought me back to myself after a long time spent adrift. I felt vigorous and free and a little bit wild. Most of all I loved the area around the Angora Lakes and the Desolation, in a way that almost didn’t make sense. It now ranks alongside Pura Ulun Danu Bratan temple in Bali as a favorite place on earth. Granted, we were there mid week and had the place largely to ourselves; I understand it gets pretty overrun during peak times. I vowed to be back soon to spend more time with that terrain. We’ll see what’s left after the fire.
Oddly enough, just last week I uploaded as my header a detail from a picture I took of the Upper Angora Lake. Tahoe had been on my mind a lot, and I like the kind of impressionistic ambiguity of the photograph.
A friend asked me why I was so upset by these fires. I suspect there is more than one answer. There are the obvious reasons: the footage of people and animals fleeing for their lives in the wake of destruction unleashed by careless (or vile) humans, and the sentimental sadness that comes with knowing that something you love is gone forever. But that isn’t really the truth about forest fires – the forest will renew itself, in a way that wouldn’t happen if, say, the land was commercially developed. Wildfires can be seen as an environmental correction. But I don’t suppose that offers much consolation to those who love that land so much that they built their homes and lives around there. Maybe my feelings are in part due to some deeper knowledge that I prefer not to acknowledge – that fire is beautiful in its own right, majestic and intoxicating. Wildfires involve a commingling of a sense of loss with a fear of being mezmerized by the agent of that loss.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from my visit last Fall.
Vox Pop Sudari 
