Red Emma in Orange Coast Magazine

The June issue of swanky Orange Coast magazine features an essay written by our own Red Emma. In it, Red reflects on the 2007 wildfires, community and our neighbors who rebuilt their home in the aftermath.


excerpt:

To live happily in the canyons below Santiago Peak, you have to really, really like oak trees. And olive trees, those hundred-year-old, out-of control giants that drop their scrawny, inedible fruit. You have to accept that well-intentioned newcomers will promise that they’ll finally harvest the olives, cure them, or set up a press and produce oil—but, of course, don’t. You curse the reckless drivers on Santiago Canyon Road and grow accustomed to junker cars, dead since the Nixon administration, parked under the olives and oaks. You have to care for your neighbors, even if you don’t like or even know them.

That’s life in a canyon, with its single road in and out.

And when disaster hits, as it did in October 2007, you find you have to know and appreciate and celebrate where you live, perhaps in ways that less rural residents cannot.

To read the rest, click here.