New imaging of NASA offers a better understanding of the slow landslide from Palos Verdes. It shows the direction of the earthy movement – west, to the coast – and the speed, up to 4 inches per week.
The analysis confirms what that of us who grew up on the superficially calm Palos Verdes Headinsel always knew: it is only a matter of time before the turbulent hill crumbles into the ocean. But it happens faster than I had ever expected.
It was only last year when the sanctuary in which my mother's funeral was dismantled on a remarkably foggy June day in 2015. Bit by bit, the Glass-And-Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos was owed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright-War taken apart so that it can be saved.
On the other side of the street of the mere foundation of the Holy House, a former home of the writer Joan Didion, given his situation, is probably in a similar risk of falling into the Pacific.
Didion, who died in 2021, comes from Sacramento, who wrote with awe on Palos Verdes. In the 1960s when Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne lived on the peninsula in a Spanish style GatekeeperDidion observed how the “burglary of the hill” made its strange descent into the ocean. Later, in her 2005 memoirs “The Year of Magical Thinking”, about the consequences of Dunne's death, Didion remembered Palo's Verdes.
The last paragraph of the book is about Abalone Cove, the aqueous goal of the ongoing landslide. Didion and Dunne had swung there, and Didion wrote about “the swelling of the clear water, the way it changed, the speed and strength it won when it was narrowed by the rocks at the foot of the dot.”
“The Year of Magic Thinking” is noticeable as a paragon of the unreliable narrative. Didion grief turns backwards and forward when she tries to take time. But in the course of her Inquisition in the events related to the heart attack of her late husband, her prose becomes sharper and more concise. Didion arises from the fog of grief and comes with clarity in Palo's Verdes and the memory of Abalone Cove. The landscape serves as a static but dynamic ship for their grief.
I wonder what the coast with chaparral, eucalyptus, wide maggail canyons and thick seasonal fogs will look like when I returned. I also wonder how I can mourn my parents, both of whom died in Palos Verdes, without the landscape in which we have created common memories.
These questions apply about the fires, in which 29 lives and more than more than more than the fires lasted, more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than more than the fires 13,000 households. For many, the prospect of return is not financially feasible; For those who are able to come home, familiar sights and much more are gone.
So what you can do with this information – from communities that have irrevocably lost through the fires, about the confirmation of NASA that the hill will soon fold up?
After the Fei Malibu devastated in 1978, Didion wrote in “The White Album” that they drove to a kindergarten on the coast near Topanga Canyon. She found charred bushes, broken glass and melted metal, where there were orchids. “I lost three years,” said the owner to Didion. “And for a moment,” she writes, “I thought we would both cry.”
With this last gesture Didion experienced the catastrophe with her with Angeleno. A memory in which no landscape can be used can be called up by sharing with someone else. Without the places you can return – Moonshadows in Malibu, the Wayfarers chapel in Palos Verdes, our own houses – it is more important than ever to talk about what has been lost. So we keep it alive.
Ryan Nourai is a writer who works on a memoir about the shooting of his late mother.