I look to the direction that I believe is north and I think of Martin slumped against a kitchen wall. The fires are south and west of my neighborhood. Martin is not in danger, not now at least. I consider for just a moment finding a policeman and alerting him that there is a wounded man inside my house near Russian Hill. But there is no policeman in sight who is not frantically attending to more immediate concerns, and I simply can’t have Martin telling someone how he came to be lying at the bottom of the stairs and then abandoned, injured, in his kitchen, especially if the person he tells is a policeman.

And yet perhaps he would say it was just the earthquake that caused his fall, and then after a doctor patched him up he’d come looking for me. For all of us.

No. I can’t think about any of that. My concern right now is for Kat’s safety and only that. I only need to get through today. Just today. I look away from the direction of the neighborhoods near Russian Hill and urge Kat to quicken her steps if she can.

She and I have taken long walks before. I know she can manage a two-mile walk, but Kat tires after the first mile. It is no ordinary stroll we are on; everything about it is wrong. A man fleeing with his own family of much older children offers to carry her, and I don’t even ask Kat if it is all right. I just let him scoop her up and we continue our trek away from the fires and toward the sand hills surrounding the park.

I’ve been to Golden Gate Park several times. It is beautiful and immense, bigger than Central Park in New York. But as its eastern entrance comes into view, the park’s serene beauty is at once eclipsed by its new purpose as instant refugee camp. And it did not escape damage from the quake, either.

The pillars of the stone gate have toppled from their foundations as if they were made of piecrust. As we move farther onto the grounds, I see that the stately canteen near the children’s playground is roofless and its walls have caved in.

And there are so many people. Those dressed in the finest of clothes are wandering onto the same grass as the poorest of souls. The emergency hospital at the pavilion isn’t the only entity using the park as a haven from the hell east of us. Someone asks a uniformed man why we aren’t being sent to the military compound at the Presidio and he is told that the Presidio is already filling up with other evacuees and injured who are fleeing the fires. We are told to keep moving toward the bowling greens beyond the carousel and children’s playground. On our way here, I had imagined we might be taking shelter in the Conservatory of Flowers, provided it is still standing, and it is. But I look to the beautiful greenhouse and I see that no one is opening its doors. And there are too many of us anyway. The man who carried Kat lowers her to the ground as we arrive at the vast lawns.