Mt. Wilson Observed
"Two firefighters die." Each thick black letter blazes through the scratchy grime of the plexiglass newspaper rack. They ignite my attention. They singe my mind even after I pass, as I board a 754 Rapid at Wilshire and Vermont and as I disembark in Los Feliz. They smolder as I walk to the library, where I'll fret and worry over personal concerns. As I wonder about my future, as my life goes on, as I deconstruct my own life and construct meaningless little tragedies out of what I find, a real tragedy sinks in.
It began as something of a triviality. Its faint scent that first day offered an occasion for a weak joke about smog, that easy target in Los Angeles.
The week moved on. The smoke rose over the horizon. The chatter rose. First slight concern on Twitter, then brief updates on hourly radio news updates, until the full force of the conflagration took shape in 16 thick, charred letters across the top of the Los Angeles Times.
My watery eyes. The orange shadows on the building across the courtyard from my apartment. The mountains of pyrocumulus clouds I've seen from the shores of Venice to the seats of a Blue Line train as it headed south toward Long Beach and every inch in between. The dry, inescapable heat. Layers of reality settled upon my skin alongside the caked, salty remnants of my sweat.
By today, the Station Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains has become nationwide news, as have a number of other blazes. Among the news: the fire's march on Mt. Wilson, where flames threatened broadcast transmitters and a historic observatory, a complex essential to the history of modern science. The observatory holds special meaning for me. In late April I visited the observatory as I closed out my time at USC's Annenberg School for Communications. K.C. Cole took my fellow science writing students and me to the observatory. We marvelled at the spot where Edwin Hubble learned our Milky Way was not the universe's only galaxy and discovered crucial evidence of the Big Bang. We wondered where Albert Einstein may have set foot during a visit. We fantasized about joining one of the viewing parties often hosted at the observatory. We thrilled that, a century later, the observatory still contributes to our unfolding understanding of the universe we inhabit.
That day, I took a few pictures of the observatory, a few of which accompany this post. It's not particularly stunning photography, but I've thought of the site often throughout the past few days and thought I'd share some selections of what I saw during my visit. Featuring Hubble's locker, old equipment that seems like it came from a 60's sci-fi show and the massive structure housing the 100-inch Hooker telescope — just one of the observatory's telescopes — the pictures evoke my memories of that visit and my awe at both the human drive for knowledge and our industrious nature.
That visit meant something else to me too. I recall stepping out of a friend's car after parking outside one of the telescopes. The air was chilly and crisp, even though it was nearly May, and I smiled when I saw a patch of snow, the first snow I had seen in person in more than two years. The scent of pine needles danced around me, intoxicated me, lured my mind to the great outdoors. It was a scent I missed, a familiar scent that reminded me of home, even though home, in a literal sense, sat on a suburban street in Ventura devoid of pine trees. It was a reminder of the Earth, this unimaginable, expansive place we wander through every second.
And this landscape had special meaning. Four years earlier — minus a month or so — I joined friends for a camping trip in these same mountains to celebrate a friend's 25th birthday. It was one of those memorable trips where the lines between friends and family blur, a trip that offered another sense of home. That trip to the observatory was my first time back to that wilderness. This week, when I saw the smoke, even before I learned the observatory was threatened, I thought of the camp site my friends had found. Of the creek we hiked upon and the rope swing from which some of them launched into a frigid creek. Of the children in our group playing among pine cones. Of acoustic music around the campfire. Of comfortable smiles. Of the contentment of nature.
As important as the landscape and the history is, I know two families have been shattered by the loss of the firefighters who perished, and I realize there are at least dozens more whose lives have been permanently changed by the loss of their homes. I'll treasure those men's sacrifice fighting to save this place that, in just two short slivers of time, meant so much to me.
For the moment, whatever the observatory's fate, however the fire progresses, I'll remember that small speck of wondrous land high above the undulating ribbons of concrete and plaster and electric light expanding outward from this corner of the universe we call home.
