In California town destroyed by fire, a search for meaning

The deadliest wildfire in California history turned Jim Denison’s trailer home into a neighborhood of one. Last November, as flames devoured the town of Paradise and thousands of residents fled, he fought back with a garden hose. He doused his trailer and yard with water while houses around him burned and gray ash fell from the blackened sky.

Six months later, Mr. Denison, who moved to Paradise in 1979, passes his days by taking a chainsaw to fallen trees to supply wood for the stove that heats his trailer. He tinkers with the 1968 Chevrolet pickup truck that he saved from the fire and plucks Merle Haggard tunes on his electric guitar. He tries to forget the emptiness that surrounds him.

“There’s not much left,” says Mr. Denison, an Air Force veteran and retired landscape worker. Cleanup crews have removed the debris of destroyed homes near his property and spread dirt across the vacant lots. The brown patches of soil resemble bandages stretched across scars on the land. “The people

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