Finding Wonder Valley, Pt I

(Feb 14, 2025) What about the visible and invisible particulate matter that LA residents were-are breathing during and after the fires?! In combination, the two largest fires destroyed 15,798 structures (homes, commercial, etc) and damaged 2,047 structures.1As you might guess, our modern built environment contains a lot of material that was simply not designed to incinerate -- batteries, plastics, refrigerators, asbestos, lead paints, etc, etc.2 Whereas the only object at our apartment that survived was an adobe chiminea (chimney), we were already talking about more sustainable building materials...

So we met Lindsey through what we believed initially was a fairly mystical grapevine of high-desert synchronicity. As we later realized throughout our stay in the high-desert, Lindsey's a well-known local character -- her ebullient alter-ego Lolly Goodman leads the electro-camp circus-pop band Stagefright and she's a veritable off-grid extraordinaire of adobe-construction, solar know-how, and desert-queerdo community-building.

Lindsey moved to Wonder Valley several years ago and has since constructed multiple domes by packing local soil into sand bags, tamping them down, and leaving them time to cure before adding more... She regurlarly hosts neighbors and passersby like ourselves to learn practically about dome-building. The repurposed bottles, cans, tires and various plywood come from her own scrapyard of neighbors' discards. The entire compound of domes and mobile homes runs off solar power from an assortment of panels and batteries. See below for pictures!

Citations:

1 As for the human toll, the two main fires combined killed 29-people and injured 13. Eaton Canyon fire stats here: https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/eaton-fire and Pacific Palisades here: https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire

2This also marked our first encounter with how city and state government officials seemed to be in denial about the ecological ramifications of 60-square-miles burning (the largest urban fire in CA). Jane Williams's part in the California Coalition for Clean Air webinar in the weeks immediately after the fire was our most informative source: https://youtu.be/gdHMOgJfiyM?t=997.