By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos

How is one to honor an event that marked one generation amid another event that will be equally sealed in the memory of the next generation? Maybe, it is to remember that while time does not heal all wounds, it is also true that painful memories gain, in time, the blessing of distance and perspective. As the Cerro Grande Fire was a defining moment in my life in Los Alamos, now, twenty-five years later, we look back and remember and learn, so let us hope that the same will be for our children who see, in these times, their own defining crisis.

Unlike many friends, our loss in the fire was trivial; a ruined floor from a melting icebox, some smoke damage from a window cracked open. The pain came by proximity, standing by friends as they surveyed the loss of possessions too valuable to measure. I can only imagine that even after all these years, the place these items held in their lives reemerges at anniversaries and birthdays, and maybe more painfully at random and unexpected times. Even without the loss of possessions, strange memories seemed to elbow in for me for a long time; when I heard the dull drone of propellers above town, those slurry-carrying planes were back again, and I would stiffen.

But the losses and the stresses of the Cerro Grande Fire are not what mostly come to mind when I seek memories of those days. I remember more clearly an elevated time when neighbors helped neighbors, when we had the support of our government and people across our nation, and the sense of relief that no firefighters or other emergency workers were injured in the chaos. I remember stories of midlife love found between two lonely people in FEMAville, those empathetic glances and handshakes and offers of assistance from around the world, the amazed and grateful look in my children’s eyes when they were offered unlimited tokens at a Santa Fe bowling alley. This latter instance is one I come back to when I want to think about the good in the world. I wonder whether the attendant had any idea what a significant and affirming gesture that simple act of kindness meant to us as parents whose stress and burdens were so meaningfully relieved by watching our children overdose on pinball machines.

After the fire, the schoolchildren of Los Alamos made seedballs, and I was one of the chaperones as we planted trees all along the Quemazon Trail. I thought at the time that I would take my boys back some day to this trail, to see the young trees that they planted now mature enough to bear fruit. We would talk then about time, and memory, of loss and gain. Now I realize that the longer I wait, the grander the trees will become, and the more majestic the view.

Of course, twenty-five years is a very long time. 9/11, wars, COVID, loss of family members and friends, even another fire and evacuation are now milestones that add distance to this, my first communal emergency. But good things, too, have happened; that boy, excited by unlimited pinball machine play, is now married and the father of two.

And so, I look around me, and at the trees that have grown to maturity. I also look at the saplings whose majesty is to come. I look at my adult children and their role as parents that emerged in decades that passed much too quickly. I look at children walking in my neighborhood and know that their parents will be amazed at the passage of time as well. I wish for a future where they will be able to see today in a hopeful perspective.

Well, what will they remember of our current travails? 

I wrote a version of this column during the 20th anniversary of the Cerro Grande Fire, amid the initial COVID scare. We all remember those terrifying days in early 2020; the initial lockdowns, lack of vaccines or effective treatment, the uncertainty of the future economic impact, the rising death toll. I wrote about the effect of time on our perspective back then, and how, over time, we might derive some positive lessons and perspectives. I now wonder what lessons we will learn looking back from the perspective of 10, 20, or 25 years hence. We will find out just how important our parks and universities, government-funded scientific research, a positive status around the world as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and our respect for our governmental and ethical guardrails are. I am sure we will at some point realize that they are all indispensable, but it may require that we suffer through some painful lessons before we do so.

Twenty-five years ago, we relied on FEMA and other governmental and quasi-governmental structures to help us. Five years ago, it was the NIH and the support they provided over the last generation that led to the vaccines and treatments that we relied upon. Now it is others who rely on all these resources, and if we don’t protect their availability to those in need now, they will not be available to us when we need them again. And inevitably, we will need them as we have before. That is the most important lesson of the last twenty-five years.