Los+Angeles+ES

"Los Angeles Agains the Mountains"

Emma Smith

In “Los Angeles Against the Mountains” McPhee describes the mountains of California, and their susceptibility to fire. He opens with a description of the plant life, and really throughout the whole article humans are hardly mentioned. Forest fires are a huge threat to California, because of its climate and dry forests. Yet, McPhee doesn’t focus on this threat, and its effects on humans. Instead, he chooses to talk about the trees, and how they thrive from these fires.

This whole article is built on a contradiction. What humans most fear, nature needs. McPhee again and again stresses the plants genetic makeup, and how it welcomes heat and fire. “ In a sense, chaparral consumes fire no less than fire consumes chaparral. Fire nourishes and rejuvenates the plants. There are seeds that fall into the soil, stay there indefinitely, and will not germinate except in the aftermath of fire.” I looked at this piece as an example of McPhee’s environmental writing. He chooses in this article, to explain the side of nature, not of man. He isn’t overtly advocating any kind of environmental message. He’s just showing us something from nature’s perspective. Like much of his writing, this article shows the tension between nature and humanity. The forests were made to flourish and grow after a fire. McPhee says, “When fire comes, it puts the nutrients back in the ground. It clears the terrain for fresh growth.” The preservation of nature is based on this cycle of destruction and re-growth. However, for humans these forest fires are deadly.

McPhee illustrates the tension between humans and nature when he describes Santa Ana. This wind comes from the desert and brings severe weather problems to much of Los Angeles. McPhee says they call it “the fire wind”, “the devil wind.” But for the forest, this wind brings a chance at new growth. What humans dread, nature welcomes. “When chamise and other chaparral plants sense the presence of Santa Ana winds, their level of moisture drops, and they become even more flammable than they were before.”