Searching for a vanishing Paradise
The severity of California’s deadly wildfires commanded cautious respect from all who reported or commented on their devastating effects.
Headline writers still found room, however, for something close to playfulness as they introduced stories about the fate of Paradise, Calif. “Paradise Lost,” announced some who trusted readers’ literary sensibilities. Others couldn’t resist declaring, “Paradise becomes hell on earth.”
Given the accompanying photos, this hardly seemed a metaphor. Then again, the sudden incineration of more than 10,000 buildings and goodness knows how many citizens may well make Paradise an emblematic symbol of the dangerous age we have entered.
“Paradise” comes from an ancient Persian word meaning “enclosed garden.” In Persian religion, it named the place where those who served the cause of good, not evil, resided after death. When Greco-Roman culture inherited the term, Jewish and Christian literature adopted it as the translation for “Garden of Eden,” the mythic, biblical place in which humankind should have lived happily and permanently but instead got themselves evicted. We’ve tried to find our way back ever since, says the story.
A Google search locates 46 places on the planet (not counting restaurants) named Paradise. Given our nation’s peculiar mix of delusions and aspirations, it should surprise no one that 27 are in the Unites States. Further examination reveals that a handful are resorts or guest ranches (in Alaska and Wyoming). New Jersey has a Paradise Mountain, Washington a mountainside. Three exist only in a novel (New York), on Facebook (Arkansas) or on YouTube (Louisiana).
Kansas, Montana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and West Virginia have small towns named Paradise, while Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio and Oregon have unincorporated communities by that name, all very small except for the 200,000 who inhabit the part of Las Vegas dubbed Paradise. Only Michigan has both a Paradise (in the Upper Peninsula) and a town called Hell (down south, fittingly).
Two outposts of Paradise have long since entered the realm of myth and metaphor. Paradise, Ariz., a mining community abandoned and left a ghost town in 1943 when the mines failed, has become the setting of a popular video game that ends with a nuclear holocaust. Singer-songwriter John Prine has lifted another vanished mining town, Paradise, Ky., into some higher realm with a song that chronicles how “Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”
No one will live again in either town, and yet, music like Prine’s lets us visit, there to ponder the sweetness but also the fragility and impermanence of places we call home.
Everywhere today, people who make their lives in places like Paradise, Calif., or the coastal regions of the southeast must decide whether to return and rebuild where fires and hurricanes routinely rampage. In some ways, the myth of an earthly paradise lies newly broken. Once more, we are banished. Hostile sentinels with flaming weapons bar our return.
Actually, authentic sojourns in paradise happen everywhere. A Paradise, Calif., high school volleyball team lost nearly everything but their lives a couple days before the match they’d earned in the state tournament semifinals. Their opponent down in Auburn wouldn’t let their season end, however. “Come anyway,” said Auburn’s girls. Paradise outcasts arrived to find new uniforms, socks and pads ready to use. Afterward, Auburn served up a feast and presented each guest with a bag of clothing and supplies.
True paradise is never a walled garden, but an open, welcoming table set by generous, caring hearts. It’s nowhere in particular and can appear anywhere. Perhaps you tasted its delights this week. And may you give and receive plenty more in the hectic weeks ahead.