Up In Smoke

The Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles, was built in the late ‘70s and opened in 1979--named after the Dorlands: Ellen, a concert pianist, and her husband Robert, who moved to the property in the 1930s. During three visits--August 2001, September 2002, April 2003--this special place seeped into my bones and blood. On May 3, 2004, two days after I arrived for what was to have been another monthlong stay, the colony was destroyed by wildfire.

At first I thought: It would have to happen when I was there. Then I realized: What a blessing I got to be there. To be--unbeknownst to me--the last person to arrive, the last person to unpack, the last person to silently thank the invisible hands that had made the bed and laid out fresh towels in the bathroom. The last person whose eyes ranged over the cast-iron wood stove and kerosene lamps and propane-fueled refrigerator. (There was no electricity.) The last to make the rounds of the other cabins: Ellen’s, with its Steinway grand on which Rachmaninoff had played; Horton’s, with its porch overlooking the Temecula Valley; the adobe library, with its Oriental rugs and old-fashioned insect collection and homemade book of wildflower photographs; Kitchen House, where we had our potlucks, with its leaded glass windows and antique teapots; Thompson’s, the artists studio above the workshop; the supply room, with its ad hoc jumble of stray glasses, silverware, ancient typewriters; the mail room, with the one phone.

The mountains, the chaparral, the shadows. The baby rattlesnake, the tarantula, the lily pond. The hummingbirds, the purple finches, the red monkey flower in spring. On the easternmost point, by the weathered Adirondack chair, the labyrinth someone had fashioned out of pebbles. The cabin I’d come to think of as mine--Composer’s--the smallest, the farthest removed, the blessedly quietest. The trestle table, the French windows, the pencil sharpener. The jays in the live oak, the moonlight flooding through the screen door. The dreams of making love with the man who never arrived.

The place you could descend into, where you knew the work was creating and killing you at the same time--and it filled you with joy. Where you were in complete solitude and at the same time in complete communion--with yourself, God, nature, the other people who were there with you, the people who would come before and would come after. Where your best self emerged, where on a good day you could write in your journal: “What’s important is courage, and humility, and bearing whatever tiny little crosses you have to bear patiently and quietly because other people with way, way bigger ones are bearing theirs patiently and quietly. Being kind. Not blowing your own horn. Not being a whiner. Not gossiping or complaining or criticizing. Making good use of your time. Being grateful. Working hard because it’s what you were put here for, because it’s all you’re fit for, because it matters, absolutely. . . . “

The last to play the piano, the second variation from Mozart’s Sonata No. 16, at dusk on Saturday. The last night slept, the last glad-awakened morning, the old priest at the convent up the street who, at Mass that Sunday morning, said that when he walked uphill, he prayed for Christ to love the hill through him. The last newspaper read, the last morning prayer whispered. Settling in that afternoon with an essay--taking it slow, because I had the whole month ahead of me, right? Karen, the director, coming down my drive with a pair of binoculars around her neck: What does she want? I thought, because nobody ever came down your drive uninvited. The clouds of black smoke billowing over the hill, the first firetruck, the first policeman. Shoving the books, the sheet music, the CDs willy-nilly into the car as ashes peppered the black convertible top. The box of tea bags stuffed in with the clothes; the Shalimar thrown in beside the dried apricots.

The things left behind: blackberries in the refrigerator, a bar of Valrhona chocolate I was saving for later. Meeting the others at the top of the rise, near the oak grove: Diane, a visual artist and writer from Manhattan; Jennifer, a poet from Santa Fe; Michel, a visual artist from Century City; Robert, the 81-year-old caretaker, who for the next three nights would camp out on Anza Road with his two trusty hounds, scanning the hills. Proceeding slowly down the driveway, as in a funeral cortege. The doors plumbed, the drive graded, the residencies scheduled, the grave marker whittled for Shady, trusted mascot. Four pairs of headlights, past the agaves and prickly pears, the bone-dry brush. The words written, the canvases painted, the songs composed. Pulling out onto Route 79. The swift’s nest above the door. Driving west toward the Ramada Inn, toward electricity, toward modems and noise and civilization.

For two days we watched the horizon grow dense with smoke, tried to get back in only to find the highway had been closed, and compulsively channel-surfed the local news. It was Tuesday before we opened the newspaper and saw the photograph, Wednesday before we learned the blaze had roared down one cut and across another to consume it all--10 buildings; everything Karen and Robert owned--leaving nothing but a melted refrigerator. Some charred birds’ nests. The silence our hearts treasured.

It was only back in L.A. that I remembered the last word written. I’d been copying it into my journal as the fire crept, unseen, over the mountain; a passage from Psalm 90 to remind me what endures:

Give us joy to balance our affliction,

for the years when we knew misfortune.

Show forth your work to your servants,

Let your glory shine on their children.

Let the favor of the Lord be upon us,

Prosper the work of our hands.

O prosper the work of our hands.