Braving Home

by Jake Halpern

  When it came to paying the bills, Jack didn’t seem overly worried. He had no mortgage, utility bills, or homeowner’s insurance.* His property taxes were negligible. Shortly after the lava cut him off, his house was appraised at two hundred dollars, dropping his yearly taxes to a very affordable twenty-five dollars a year. In general, Jack was extremely frugal, and with the help of his garden and an occasional guest he felt confident that he could last until Social Security kicked in. In the meantime, his only remaining connection to the financial world was a lone savings account, which he drew on as infrequently as possible.

  According to Jack, the more time that he spent on the volcano, the better he felt about his decision to live there full-time. As his memories of the workplace drifted away, so did many of his daily complaints. “It took me a year after working to learn to digest properly and enjoy a meal,” he explained. Now he claimed that everything tasted better. Jack was very keen on the “fresh twang” of his own tap water, which he called the “champagne of drinking water,” fresh from the clouds above. Occasionally, he powered up the icebox and cooled off a glass for himself. “I like to get it teeth-hurtingly cold,” he told me.

  Besides eating better, Jack had also learned to rest properly. Before retiring to the volcano, he rarely slept well. “I was constantly thinking of work,” he explained. “I would wake up in the middle of the night, my eyes would slam wide open, and I would think: Shit, did I tighten that valve or fix that wire?” Nowadays, despite his room being occasionally illuminated by the demonic red glow of the volcano, he claimed to sleep better.

  Much of Jack’s day was now spent in the garden—watering the plants, pruning the trees, and picking the fruit. When he wasn’t gardening, he was reading, or listening to the radio, or keeping an eye on the lava. He had only one real obligation: Once a day, at six-thirty A.M., he telephoned the helicopter company to give them a lava/weather report. These were the staples of his life, though he was quick to admit, “The whole thing is a big experiment.”

  Jack’s use of the word “experiment” made me think of another famous American hermit who also referred to his life as an experiment—Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, Thoreau took to the woods and built a crude hut along the edge of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion,” Thoreau wrote in Walden. He found his new life of isolation to be quite pleasing. “I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself,” he wrote. Thoreau soon came to enjoy the silence, broken only by the sound of the birds—“those thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager.” His days soon blended together, no longer “minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of the clock.”7

  Jack seemed to share Thoreau’s rugged individualism, his self-reliance, his pride of home, his respect for nature, and his desire to be free from both government and society. In truth, so did Thad and Babs. Yet, perhaps needless to say, all of their situations were far more precarious and challenging than Thoreau’s. For them, the personal freedom of isolation came at a cost. This was particularly true with Jack. On any given day the lava stood to devour everything that he had built, and, on some very fundamental level, this had to undermine his peace of mind.

  Despite all of his nonchalance, Jack did show signs of stress. In our first few days on the volcano, we were plagued by helicopters sweeping directly over his house. In addition to causing a terrible racket, these flybys were a sure sign that the lava was near. In the weeks leading up to my arrival, Jack’s house had become a main attraction for the many tourists constantly hovering overhead. At one point, Jack’s favorite radio station even announced that the lava was getting dangerously close to the “house with the red roof.”

  Finally, on our third day on the volcano, Jack took me on a lava-scouting mission. We hopped on his Kawasaki motorcycle and set out for the uppermost point on the kipuka. It was a harrowing ride. We sped along several overgrown roads, ducking under tree branches, dodging shrubs, blowing through old stop signs, and watching for pigs that occasionally lurched out of the jungle. We continued upward until the road disappeared into a mound of volcanic rock. Jack parked his bike and the two of us climbed over the rocks for ten minutes until we had a pretty good view of the kipuka below. We could see several places where smoke was billowing, but with the wind and the uneven terrain, it was almost impossible to determine its origin. Eventually, after another hour of unsuccessful scouting, we returned to Jack’s house, where we sat on his front deck, ate lunch, and watched the helicopters overhead. By this point, the constant clatter of the mechanical blades was getting to all of us.

  “Man,” said Jack finally. “It’s like I’m living at a damn airport.”

  After four days on the volcano it was time for Don to leave. He was scheduled to meet his wife on the island of Molokai, roughly 150 miles to the northwest. Jack agreed to walk his friend back to civilization, but first we all spent one last morning hanging out.

  In the preceding days, Don had talked at length about how much he enjoyed visiting the volcano. He was taken with the lava, particularly the “magical” views that it created each and every night. Yet Don was also interested in the verdant undergrowth and animal life of the kipuka. Don’s job, as a “vegetation/pest management consultant,” made him well situated to consider many of Jack’s predicaments. Periodically the two of them discussed road maintenance, the overpopulation of pigs, and the cultivation of various garden plants. Above all, however, Don was impressed with the life that Jack had created—a life that seemed to be devoid of “real-world worries.”

  “I want this life,” Don said at one point.

  “You can have it,” replied Jack. “You just have to give up everything you’ve got.”

  “I know,” said Don, “and there are really just a few things holding me back—like seeing my kids through college, and being there to help my mother.”

  Jack continued to encourage his friend to act on his impulses, but cautioned that it would come at a sacrifice. To his credit, Jack was always very realistic about both the advantages and disadvantages of his life. “Sometimes I have to wonder whether I am blessed or cursed,” he remarked at one point.

  On that final morning together, the subject of Don’s appreciation for life on the kipuka came up once more. “So why not buy a house in here?” asked Jack finally. “It wouldn’t cost much, and we could be neighbors.”

  “Yeah,” said Don, very quietly, as if to himself. He smiled and then looked away. There was nothing more to say. At least for the time being, this was not a valid option. Unlike Jack, he had obligations to keep—kids, a job, a wife, an aging mother—a life on the outside. After a long and somewhat awkward pause in which nothing was said, I finally glanced back at Jack and noticed a rather curious look on his face. I struggled for a moment to place it, and then I knew: It was pity.

  “I don’t know how he does it,” Jack told me later. “I really don’t.”

  As Don was preparing to leave, I asked Jack if he minded my sticking around for a few more days. I felt as if I was just getting into life on the volcano, and besides, I wanted to see how things developed with the lava. I was a bit uneasy about infringing on Jack’s privacy, but when I finally summoned the nerve to broach the subject, Jack didn’t bat an eye. “Sure,” he said, “you’re welcome to stay for a while longer.” So while Jack escorted Don back across the flats, I stayed on the kipuka.

  After Jack’s return, with just two of us in the house, life grew decidedly quieter and I began to get a better sense of Jack’s daily routine—the early-morning radio dispatches to the helicopter company, the midday hours of reading biographies and other nonfiction, the afternoons spent working in the garden or mowing the grass, the dinners on the front deck, and the evenings of watching the lava and listening to blues songs like “Nagging Woman,” “A Hard Night on the Planet,” and “I’m Going to Kill My Buddy.”

  One even
ing, as we sat on the porch, the subject of Jack’s ex-girlfriend came up. Her name was Patty and she had lived with Jack for almost ten years. Initially the volcano wasn’t a problem in their relationship, insisted Jack. Both of them enjoyed the isolation that it created. “Patty used to spend hours on her shortwave radio, talking to people in Australia and Brazil,” he recalled. “And we also worked on things together, like growing coffee beans and sending them out as Christmas presents.” Yet according to Jack, the isolation ultimately made Patty unhappy. “She missed being able to visit her friends, or the beach, or the local store,” he explained. “She wasn’t enjoying herself anymore, and I can’t blame her.”

  “When exactly did she leave?” I asked.

  “In 1991, shortly after the earthquake,” said Jack. “That whole earthquake episode was really hard on her. She felt like her home was violated. It was never the same for us after that.” Jack paused to look out at the lava, which was forming a sizable pool on the flats below. “But what can I do?” he asked finally. “It’s all a tradeoff, and I chose to live up here.”

  “Was it hard after she left?”

  “Sure,” said Jack. “She left her shortwave radio here and I had to put the thing away in the desk drawer. Suddenly she was gone. A woman’s touch was just gone. Yeah, the first few months were pretty hard to take.”

  “Do you ever think about calling her?” I asked.

  “No,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”

  “What about you?” asked Jack. “Do you have a girlfriend back in Boston?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “That’s good,” he replied. “Living alone can get tiresome.”

  I spent another three or four days on the volcano with Jack. Peaceful though much of this time was, the sounds of helicopters and methane explosions were pretty constant. Periodically we experienced a few hours of complete quiet, but without fail the clamor eventually resumed. “It hasn’t been like this in years,” Jack told me. “All the red flags are starting to go up.”

  By my last evening, things had really heated up. As the methane explosions grew louder and louder, Jack and I discussed whether they sounded more like propane tanks exploding or howitzers going off. By late evening we were both pining for a little white noise—anything to get our minds off the explosions. We flicked on the radio and tuned in to Art Bell, a late-night talk show host who covers a range of paranormal subjects ranging from vampire monkeys to UFOs. To my surprise, I found the show immensely comforting, and I was lulled to sleep with the rather cozy feeling that the entire world was as spooky as Jack’s lava-side B&B.

  Around midnight Jack woke me. “Listen,” he said in a dramatic whisper. I heard nothing for a moment, and then a loud explosion. “Come on,” he said. “Check it out.” Groggily, I followed him upstairs to his bedroom and pressed my face against the picture window that faced westward, toward the hidden wall of stone that kept the kipuka safe. Above the silhouettes of the treetops I could see a large, flickering red glow. Without question, a forest fire was blazing.

  “Wouldn’t it be something if this place went down after all these years?” said Jack. “I mean, I can’t visualize it, but I realize it’s a possibility.” Jack shook his head. “This has been going on for eighteen years, and sometimes it’s just fucking torture.” There was another explosion. “At what point do you walk away from your life’s dream?” asked Jack, as if to himself.

  “If you had to leave tonight, what would you take?” I asked him.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “You can’t exactly run away with the icebox.” He grew silent, but eventually he came up with an answer. He’d grab the rug that he’d woven. It had taken him three years to weave, and he said he rather liked it. This sounded like a good choice, I told him. Then Jack looked over at me, bunched up his lips, and smiled. There was nothing sardonic about it. Just a sweet, rather sad smile—a rare offering of friendship on his part—and I returned it through the darkness.

  “I guess if this place goes, a certain burden would be gone,” Jack admitted finally.

  “What would you do then?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Jack. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  After bushwhacking through the jungle on a narrow pig trail, Jack leans on his machete and gazes out across the giant stone wall that steers the lava away from his house.

  The following morning I awoke at six-thirty to the sound of Jack calling the helicopter company on his telephone. “Hello from Royal Gardens,” he said. “We’re still here. We’ve got a few clouds but it looks like a nice day on the mountain.”

  After breakfast we decided to hike westward through the jungle toward the area that seemed to be on fire the night before. We set out on a well-trodden pig path, but it soon got so tight in places that we had to duck though narrow tunnels that were sheathed in vines and giant gauzy spider webs. Eventually, after some bushwhacking with a machete, we emerged from the jungle and came upon the giant stone rise that safeguarded the kipuka. It was roughly twenty feet tall and as solid as a seawall—though at this point, it gave me about as much confidence as the dike in Princeville.

  Together, we scrambled up to the top and peered over. The stone rise descended into a small field of gravel about a hundred yards across. There, on the far side, we saw it: a river of lava oozing its way down the mountain. In the middle of this river was an island of trees, mostly burned but still crackling with flames. This is what we had heard the night before. The wall had not been breached. The kipuka was not on fire.

  “I’ll sleep a lot better tonight,” Jack told me.

  In the distance we could hear the clatter of helicopter blades, and moments later a tourist helicopter swooped down and began hovering just a few hundred feet overhead. Jack waved at the passengers happily. “Hey, I can see them waving back!” he said. Jack set down his machete and waved with both hands.

  “I’m feeling really good,” said Jack. “And everybody is having a good time, so no worries—right?”

  Later that morning, when we made it back to the house, I began to get my things in order. When my bags were packed, Jack and I exchanged addresses. “Do me one favor,” he said. “Sign my guest book.” Jack then produced a slender bound volume with a number of written entries from the guests who had stayed at his B&B. Several of the entries belonged to Don, who signed in every time he visited. I grabbed a pen and wrote a few lines, thanking Jack once again for the incredible time that he had shown me.

  An hour or so later, I left the kipuka on my own. Initially, I was reluctant to do this, but Jack insisted I could handle it. “You know how to walk across the lava now,” he told me proudly. “Besides, this way you can come and visit me whenever you want.”

  Very cautiously I made my way across the several miles of semisolid ground that separated Jack from the outside world. Eventually I came upon two volcano-gazing honeymooners whose jaws dropped when they saw me emerge from the smoldering fields of lava. When I asked them if they might give me a lift back to Hilo, the couple exchanged nervous looks and reluctantly agreed.

  Upon leaving the kipuka I felt something resembling withdrawal. This feeling was only compounded when I was soon stranded at Honolulu International Airport, waiting to be bumped onto a flight back to the mainland. As I tried to sleep on the airport’s cheaply carpeted floors, receiving occasional visits from Gator and Agent 99, the airport’s two beagle drug dogs, I thought of Jack’s place. I already missed the long mornings spent on his deck, chatting and taking in the views; the lush green of the jungle; the blue sprawl of the Pacific; and the constant stirrings of the volcano. By comparison, the outside world seemed so thoroughly drab and uneventful, and now I understood why Don Bartel had such misgivings about returning to the “real world.”

  As I continued my wait at the airport, mingling with the crowds of newly arrived mainlanders—pale-skinned, adorned with leis, and utterly ecstatic to be in paradise—I thought again of Jack. Earlier in the day, as we said our go
odbyes, I asked him if he was going to be all right. It was a stupid question, and we both laughed as soon as I asked it. “It was good having you,” said Jack finally with a clap on the shoulder. And like two grown men with nothing in common, except perhaps an awkward feeling of mutual goodwill, we shook hands and parted ways.

  Canyon of the Firefighting Hillbillies

  Malibu, California

  I’LL BE THE FIRST to admit, Malibu seems like an odd choice. What could be so dangerous in the land of movie stars, millionaires, and scantily clad hangers-on? The answer is simple: wildfires.

  Malibu is situated on a rugged stretch of coastline so arid and combustible that it is known as the wildfire capital of North America. Roughly once every two and a half years, Malibu is hit with a blaze that wipes out a thousand acres or more, and at least once a decade things get wildly out of control, as miles of property and hundreds of homes are reduced to ash. Since 1970, these infernos have claimed more than a thousand luxury homes and caused more than $1 billion in property damage. And yet, as everybody knows, Malibu is not a ghost town. Far from it: Malibu’s property values are higher than ever, and its beachfront palaces—some of which have burned down and been rebuilt several times—are more beautiful than ever.1

  Malibu first appeared on my radar when a friend from college encouraged me to read a book called Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis. The book offers a detailed history of natural disasters in the Los Angeles area, including a feverish account of the wildfire that hit Malibu in 1993. According to Davis, during the height of the fire, Malibu was a “surreal borderland between carnival and catastrophe” in which celebrities such as Sean Penn and Ali MacGraw watched their homes burn as the sky above swarmed with television news helicopters. Traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway came to a standstill as incoming fire trucks encountered an onslaught of fleeing Bentleys, Porsches, and Jeep Cherokees. Meanwhile, two housewives from the Big Rock neighborhood loaded their dogs and jewels into kayaks and paddled out to sea, leaving their beachfront mansions and bewildered maids to face the flames. Davis observes, “The chaotic exodus was oddly equalizing: panicky movie stars, clutching their Oscars, mingled with frantic commoners.”2