It would be lovely, we thought, to get married in the suburb of Los Angeles where I grew up.
My childhood home in Thousand Oaks could help host guests. We could collect the fragrant jasmine that blooms in the backyard each summer. My fiancé’s family, who aren’t from California, could experience the things he and I treasure about living here: the ever-pleasant weather, the stunning ocean vistas, the proximity to nature.
But in all our planning, we seem to have forgotten a quintessential California reality: Beauty comes with risk.
In November, about seven months before our wedding date, a fast-moving fire threatened to burn down our venue, until the winds blessedly began to blow in the opposite direction. This month, the devastating Palisades fire leveled cliffside homes in Malibu, including a tile-roofed cottage with turquoise trim and a balcony with the best view of the Pacific Ocean I have ever seen. That home, owned by a close family friend, was where my fiancé and I had planned to spend our wedding night.
I feel silly talking about my upcoming wedding when thousands of people have lost their houses, and nearly all the things inside that made them homes. But I am struck by my own blindness, despite years of living in — and reporting on — life and tragedy in California.
I had believed I could plan my way out of any heat waves, fires, mudslides or atmospheric rivers. In other words, I knew natural disaster could strike California, but I did not believe that it could strike me. The shocking scale and reach of this month’s fires has forced me to accept the latter fact. I’m still grappling with how this new understanding will change my life here, as I’m sure I will be for a long time.
I feel like a child who’s just realized that her parents are people, too, as imperfect as anyone else. My home, California, is a place like any other, perhaps more imperfect than anywhere else.
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