You smell it, or think you do. Like a bonfire on a beach. Then you see it in your headlights. Ash. Or maybe insects? The signs are coy at first, on the westbound 118 Freeway, cleaving through sandstone crags that are 70 million years old. The thunderhead of smoke, a purple lesion on the orange twilight, is mysterious but not alarming. But you round a bend near the Santa Susana Pass and the fire is suddenly before you: ruby-red ribbons of flame coiled around dark hills of sagebrush and sumac, accented by the snaking brake lights of Simi Valley traffic. It is unnatural and natural, simultaneously. This is the Easy Fire, the one that gnawed the perimeter of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and it quickly disappears from sight. It’s nighttime now, and the winding roads and staggered hillsides perform sleights of hand. A wildfire […]