While I was on a work sabbatical vacationing in what’s known as the “Alps of Japan,” I watched from afar as Los Angeles burned. On social media, I scrolled to see the terror of wildfires surrounding the city, smoking out the sky and forcing widespread evacuations. I felt the familiar helplessness that came over me in 2019 when I watched Paradise burn from a state away in Oregon.
After snowboarding in feet of fresh powder, I returned to my hotel to check and see who else would be forced to leave their homes and not know when they’d be able to return and if they’d have a place to come home to. I thought about what I could control and what I could do to help.
I thought about the work event I had scheduled months out. A community hike in partnership with Usal to help launch a new hiking boot. Was Griffith Park going to burn? How do you get people to try on hiking boots when they’re not sure where they’re going to sleep? I had made a conscious effort to stay off of my work email and messaging, but I wanted to know what was going to happen.
I talked a lot to Keaton Kustler, the project manager from Usal, who was very active on Instagram sharing news about evacuation orders and rallying the community for donations and support.
By the time I returned to the office, the weight of the situation was still on my mind, but I was relieved to hear from the project manager at On that the hike would go on, despite everything. Keaton was, too. She reaffirmed that events like this are what people need in the time following disaster.
It was during this time of uncertainty that the hike clearly became more than just a product launch in my mind—it became a reminder of the resilience of a community in the face of disaster. On the morning of the hike, I was nervous. We’d lost an hour of sleep from Daylight Savings Time, I was overcaffeinated and underhydrated, and I felt my typical pre-event fear that none of the virtual RSVPs would materialize. But slowly, people started showing up.
There was a young woman from the valley who worked as a PA in film. She said her mom was a producer and somehow knew from a young age she’d work in the industry too.
There was a transplant from the Bay Area who works in design for a tech company and said that to flex her creativity she sells art at local markets around the city. Though not particularly lucrative, a necessary outlet to continue the corporate grind.
A group of guys in spiffy hiking gear chatted me up about clothing trends I’d seen in Japan and On’s development in the outdoor space. They were all from around the city and passionate about a soccer club they’d created. Every weekend, they could be found in one of the many parks playing pickup games, cooking, and talking trash to each other about their favorite professional teams. The oldest member of their club is 65, and the youngest is 15.
All of them knew someone who was affected by the fire. If they hadn’t been evacuated themselves, the dangerous air quality had kept them inside, panicked and uncertain during the weeks of smoky skies.
The term ‘community’ is often overused in marketing, so much so that it can lose its meaning. But seeing these diverse Angelinos come together under the bright, clear sky—so different from the smoke and uncertainty that recently hung over the city—reminded me that community is something far more powerful than a buzzword. It’s a force that cannot be captured in a pitch deck, but one that sustains lives.
*in an effort to write more in general – I am trying to wrangle the notes and photos from my work trips in these short essays: DO WORK
Eli Stillman 
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