Even as I urged them to leave, from my home in the Mojave Desert, I was moved by a different compulsion: to get in my car, report to work and rush, via fire engine or helicopter, toward the fires. It ...

There are no stoplights in Boron. There’s no youth center either, though much of the town’s daily life revolves around its children. There are still Joshua trees, only a few thousand less now. Carless ...