Don't look north
We had planned to be in Colorado this past weekend, with a goal to be in Ouray for the Ice Festival. I’ve never been but Molly has been a regular attendee in the last few years and has been raving about it: the program consists of ice climbing clinics by day and competitions by night, and of talks given by climbing and moutaineering celebrities. Unfortunately, Omicron and the prospect of spending extended time indoors with people coming from all over the country didn’t make for espcially inviting cicumstances.
Instead, we decided to make it a second three-day week-end in a row and headed to Big Sur. In 15 years of living in the Bay Area, I had somehow never stopped by Bixby Bridge. By the time we got there, it looked abolutely glorious under the California winter sun:
And about 36 hours later, it looked like this:
We learned of the fire as we had just finished watching Don’t Look Up, which made for an eerie few minutes as we were transitioning back into the real world. The movie ridicules the postures of people —politicians, journalists, business people and, ultimately, folks from all walks of life— when confronted with a predictible tragedy.
The script is rumored to have been written in 2019 but it’s undoubtedly been reworked in light of the last two years of pandemic. Certain scenes triggered feelings of acute cringe for me because of how recent that scar tissue is (you could argue the wound remains open). The movie lacks subtletly in its delivery, but its depiction of corrupt, incompetent people being trusted with the utmost responsibilty is spot-on. It’s an apt blend of Idiocracy and Deep Impact, heavily influenced by the Trump presidency.
The plot also touches to a recurring argument about global warming: that looming disasters should only be dealt with at the condition that addressing them registers as a positive outcome for the economy. That, in due time, any time now, supply and demand will naturally rule in favor of the good side. And if that’s the case, why even bother building a moral sense that would assist in making policy decisions?
The fire ended up having only moderate impact on us — we were staying in Cambria, far enough south that the smoke didn’t reach us. We’d already driven through the section of Route 1 that was closed down — just a handful of hours ahead of the fire starting. Everything was fine, we just had to avoid looking north.
