So here’s my question: you have to evacuate under “immediate threat to life.” What do you take with you? Would you have a better list if you thought it through ahead of time, or would facing the moment of truth give you clarity, and focus? Official lists of what to take feature things like birth certificates, marriage certificates, title deeds, and insurance documents. Really? My entire desk does not fit in my car, and surely these things are replaceable. An extremely organized person might have them all in one big envelope, or maybe have photos of them all on their phone. Too late now.

Clothing, though replaceable, is on the list since it’s an immediate need. My friend Jean once told me of a time when she faced an evacuation “warning,” which means there’s more time. She went to her children’s closets and pulled out clothing for them; went to her husband’s closet and pulled out clothing for him; then went to her own closet, took a look, said “Nah,” and closed the door. I greatly respect her ability to see opportunity in the prospect of loss. She did not, in fact, have to evacuate. I always hoped she went out and bought some new clothes anyway.

But what about the irreplaceable? People sometimes make the error of assuming that, since I’m a poet, I don’t value material things. Wrong. Poets love things. Keats wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Williams wrote “no ideas but in things.” Pablo Neruda, an avowed communist, wrote odes – scads of odes – to material things. He loved them he said, for “the trace of someone’s fingers/ on their handle or surface.” The Christmas ornaments my children made when they were small; the quilts my grandmother made for me; the antique windowseat my father and I refinished together when I was a teenager: irreplaceable. They are safe with me here, in Ann Arbor, but I can only imagine how it would feel to lose them in ash and chaos. “Evacuate” has in it the root for vacuum: empty. Let’s hope the time comes soon when Altadena fills itself back up, and returns to anonymity.