A Letter From Los Angeles

Out of the ashes, an answer emerges for how to grow once again

By Alison Singh Gee

January 24, 2025

Photo by Jason Ryan/NurPhoto via AP

Pacific Palisades, California, on January 11. | Photo by Jason Ryan/NurPhoto via AP

The morning after I found out that 17 of my close friends had lost their homes to the LA fires, the most destructive and costliest blazes in American history, my dachshunds and I decided to brave a walk outside. On any other day, we would have strolled past the charming bungalows and little churches that line my village’s quiet streets. But that was before the life-warping devastation that had just burned a swath through my hometown, destroying 12,000 structures in its wake. 

Today was different. I wanted to lead my canine posse to the LA River, to take in the waterway’s shimmering tableau of wildlife, abundant and natural, regardless of the river’s jarring concrete casing. Despite everything that had just happened—a shock attack of hurricane-force winds, entire communities decimated, dozens of humans dead, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of animals lost or incinerated—those banks would show me something affirming. There would be herons wading through the shallows, squirrels collecting acorns, a red-tailed hawk or two perched in the sycamores and willows. At the river, I would encounter the native animals that I loved so much in my wooded pocket of Northeast LA. They were just trying to live their lives, just like the rest of us. 

I slipped on a mask and glanced out my dining room’s picture windows. The winter skies were practically black with the ashen storm. My white station wagon was littered with gray flakes. Fallen cactus trees crisscrossed the sidewalks. Fast-food wrappers gathered against a neighbor’s fence. I took a deep breath and steeled myself. Some part of me knew that for as much beauty as I might see at the river, I would also take in the tragedy. 

I opened my front door, and Tally, my instinct-driven long-haired red, strained at her leash, squealing for release. Her brother, Jiaji, a cream-colored mixed dachshund, sniffed the air, thick with smoke. He looked up at me. 

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“It’ll be OK, baby,” I said, stroking his anxious face. But would it really? Would anything ever be OK again? My friends had seen their homes disappear in flames and blow away as embers. For some, these were the homes they grew up in. One of my friends has a 90-year-old mother who escaped from her 1940s Palisades house on one of the Alphabet streets with only a few changes of clothes, 56 years of memories and possessions incinerated in a matter of minutes. 

After my Palisades friend got the news that their house and garden were gone, she posted a video of the fruit tree her deceased father had planted when she and her sister were children. The caption: "Goodbye, Fuji planted by my father."

*

After 23 years in this house, my oak tree had become part of me, like my dreams, like my desires, like my id, like my soul. It had inhabited our rectangle of heaven 77 years longer than I had. What right did anyone have to determine its death?

The three of us stepped out onto the lawn, now a massive pile of windblown leaves and broken branches splayed out like brittle hands grasping for help. 

Tally ran ahead, barking wildly at a squirrel sprinting up our oak tree. As a child, I always dreamed of having an oak in my front yard. My father, an amateur botanist, had told me that the Native Americans considered such arbors sacred. For the most part, my 100-year-old oak delivered on that magic. Its topiary was naturally shaped like a voluminous dark-green heart. Its branches offered home to a family of raccoons, blue jays, ravens, about a dozen squirrels, countless caterpillars, and hundreds of species of insects. In the evenings, skunks and opossums gathered under its mass. When my ex-husband had finally moved out of our house, I found a fallen nest, cobbled together with twigs, paper, and shreds of plastic tarp, on the lawn—a mysterious token of condolence, perhaps, for a far-too-long marriage we had finally given up on. I loved that my tree supported so much life, including my own.  

But this morning, the oak did not look to me like an icon of grace and magnanimity. Today, this grand old tree looked like a fire hazard. 

Its branches were straining to reach my tiled roof. I knew if a fire sparked beneath its limbs, my oak would betray me, spreading flames to my beautiful bungalow. Yet there was no way I could cut down the tree. In California, that was generally illegal. Beyond that, after 23 years in this house, my oak tree had become part of me, like my dreams, like my desires, like my id, like my soul. It had inhabited our rectangle of heaven 77 years longer than I had. What right did anyone have to determine its death?

I shook away thoughts of the 1,400°F blazes I had seen on television, my friends’ houses reduced to lampposts and chimneys, and my courageous furry duo and I walked toward the river. Ashes flew down from the sky, covering windshields and sidewalks like sad, gray snow; a singed page from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote fluttered across the street. I picked it up and read a sentence:

“There is a remedy for everything except death.” 

I read the line once more, then folded the page and put it in my pocket. 

*

Once at the banks, the dogs perked up. They sniffed around the bases of eucalyptus and cottonwood trees, chased vacationing geese down the banks. As we walked, I heard the voices of my Altadena friends, dissolving into tears as they recounted the final frenzied moments, throwing wedding and baby photos, jewelry and shoes, MacBooks and journals into suitcases and speeding down streets as their neighbors’ houses went up in flames. Their stories played in an endless loop in my brain.  

The dogs whipped their heads to the left, their bodies suddenly on high alert. A lone coyote skulked along the river. It was approaching us, brazenly moving closer. It looked fixedly in our direction. I was sure the animal was zeroing in on my two pups and imagining cocktail wienies smothered in Dijon. “Go!” I shouted. But the coyote stood its ground. It seemed to be demanding something, anything, to eat, but maybe pleading for some compassion too. The coyote was hungry; its cubs were hungry. There was nowhere for them to go. No place to shelter. No source of food. 

I looked at the sparkling river, lined with utility poles, the California sky brushed with black. A formation of geese flew across the sky. Was that V for victory or for vanquished? I closed my eyes and breathed in the acrid air. I mourned for my city and my friends. I mourned for the coyote.

Then I picked up my dogs, held them close, and hustled away from the river. 

*

A fire is considered a great equalizer—it can destroy the world of everyone equally, no matter their wealth, status, or power.

At night, I couldn’t sleep. Who could? The winds howled and the too-close-to-the-house branches scraped at my windows. Instead, I clicked on my bedside lamp, picked up my phone, and doomscrolled. 

On Facebook, the Pasadena Humane Society posted photographs of the animals that had survived the fire, but not without a cost: Someone’s lost German shepherd, looking frightened and alone, its paws in bandages. A kitten with half its fur singed. A weary bright-blue peacock with blackened feathers. A tiny raccoon kit separated from its mom.

On the television news, I saw iPhone footage of a bobcat and her two small cubs running along the freeway. The burned paws of a dead mountain lion. A family of exhausted skunks taking refuge near trashcans in an alley. 

When there’s a massive fire like the Palisades and Eaton, it’s often the wildlife that suffer the most. “The animals—they are out of options,” Beth Pratt, the California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, told me. She pointed to a 2022 study that explored how the Woolsey Fire, which roared through the Santa Monica Mountains and into Ventura County, impacted mountain lions. “Just to survive, they had to take greater risks, do more road crossings, because their open spaces had been burned. They had no food, no water, no cover.” 

I’ve heard that from a scientific perspective, a fire is considered a great equalizer—it can destroy the world of everyone equally, no matter their wealth, status, or power. A fire takes down anything in its path. That was especially true in the case of our native wildlife. They had nowhere to go to recover. 

Over the next few days, I would see the same coyote roaming my village, prowling yards and alleys, searching for squirrels, kittens, small dogs, to take back to its hungry brood in their den. One local friend posted a photograph of a young coyote sprawled out on a pool chaise in her backyard. It rested its head on its paws, its eyes shut with fatigue.  

My mind flashed back to a front yard I often passed when my daughter went to South Pasadena Middle School. The garden was vibrant with flowers, verdant with native bushes and trees. Butterflies and hummingbirds flitted around. There was a plaque mortared onto a boulder. It read "Certified Wildlife Habitat."  

According to Mary Phillips, who heads the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife and Certified Wildlife Habitat programs, these environments offer “butterflies, bees, birds, and other local wildlife with the essential elements of habitat in areas where people live. It provides nectar, pollen, seeds, and berries and host plants that specific wildlife have co-evolved with and are essential to their survival.” Biodiversity, especially in highly populated areas, she says, “is threatened by pollution, by climate change, and habitat loss—Certified Wildlife Habitat seeks to minimize this impact by creating healthier spaces for both wildlife and people.”

When I asked naturalist Pratt about these gardens, her voice grew animated: “This is absolutely one of the most exciting things we could do as a community to help wildlife recover and thrive. There are ways to make our landscapes—backyards, front yards, churchyards, schoolyards—welcoming to wildlife. By adding native plants—like milkweed—and providing cover and water, we can bring back some of the habitat that they have lost.” 

Pratt, in her fifties, remembers that when she was a child, her backyard used to be filled with monarch butterflies. “Now seeing a butterfly is like seeing a unicorn.” Returning native plants and water sources such as bird baths to the garden can bring back such essential life as butterflies and bees. “It’s the little things that run the world,” she says, quoting American botanist E.O. Wilson. “If we don’t have bees, we don’t have mountain lions.”

Phillips told me that a core component of a Certified Wildlife Habitat garden is to incorporate 70 percent or more native plants—that includes flowering perennials, groundcover, and shrubs—into the existing garden. “These plants provide wildlife with the habitat essentials of food, cover, and places to raise their young. Providing a water source, such as a bird bath, fountain, or butterfly puddling dish is the final element.” Gardeners would then commit to not using herbicides or pesticides or any other chemicals in the space. “This would help maintain a healthy safe haven for wildlife and people.”

I already knew I would do this. But I had some questions: How would I even begin to create such a habitat? Could I keep the fruit trees and other flora already in place? 

“A simple way to start building a habitat is to assess the area you have to plant in to determine if any of the existing plants provide wildlife benefits and are not non-native invasive plants,” Phillips told me. “Fruit trees and nectar-providing existing plants can remain, as long as they don’t crowd out the natives.”

During this bleak moment in my hometown’s history, the thought of building a wildlife habitat offered some much-needed hope. 

The next morning, I opened a kitchen cupboard and took out a large ceramic bowl. I filled it with water, took it outside, and placed it in the garden under the oak tree. I stood back and imagined what would soon be—where at this moment grew roses, eucalyptus, monsteras, and satsumas, there would also grow milkweed, California tree poppies, hummingbird sage, and California fuchsia.

A hummingbird hovered above the bowl and lowered itself for a drink, a vision of what was to come. By the next catastrophic blaze, I vowed to myself, the garden and I—we would be ready.