Why I’m Never Leaving Malibu

Ultra athlete turned bestselling author and podcast star Rich Roll lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Malibu, where fire is a natural part of the ecosystem. He and his family have been forced to evacuate at least five times in the past seven years—a somewhat alarming ritual that has deepened their relationship with impermanence. Last January, as the Palisades Fire morphed and sprawled, chewing up parched chaparral from Mandeville Canyon to Saddle Peak, Rich and his family left their plant-based lasagna on the table and dirty dishes in the sink, piled into their cars, and fled to a Residence Inn. He had booked one night. They wouldn’t return home for weeks. Yet despite the risks, there is no other place he’d rather be.

In the past, the fires were either too far away, or we were never in a situation where there were strong winds blowing the fire toward us. This was different. The winds were just insane, and where we live is not densely populated. It’s not necessarily a high priority when firefighting resources are limited, and it’s pure bush from the ridge, where the fire was ultimately held in abeyance, all the way to our house. So we got lucky. The winds died down, and they had enough control over the other fronts of the fire that they could dispense air support to our side when we needed it. In a parallel universe, like if the winds had continued to stay high, it would have blazed right through to us.

But where we live has been devastated. How does Malibu recover? Not just economically, but spiritually? What makes Malibu so special is that while people think of it as the land of the ultra-rich, there’s a middle class that has lived in this area for generations, and the fear is that developers will start buying up tons of land, sell it at a premium, and force out anybody less than the uber-wealthy. The Palisades, same thing. There are families who have been living there for generations, and many either didn’t have fire insurance or are underinsured. Those people are going to get cleared out in the same way that the Woolsey Fire cleared a lot of people out of the Trancas area and other parts of Malibu. So there’s a sadness, bordering on despair, over the future of Malibu.

But I think the piece that I spend the most time thinking about is just the impermanence and uncertainty of this area that we love, and impermanence in general. We, as human beings, are always desperate to control our lives, or to delude ourselves into believing that we’re in control, and nature just levied a massive dose of reality. Which is that everything is uncertain. There’s very little that we have control over, and we can either indulge the despair and anxiety that produces, or we can seize it as an opportunity to deepen our surrender to that truth.

I think this fire has made hundreds of thousands of people reframe their relationship with their possessions and what’s really important, and there’s something healthy about that. I say that as somebody who didn’t lose everything. So there’s a certain privilege layered on top that I recognize because I didn’t lose my home. But living in this area, you’re always kind of connected to that idea of impermanence. Because these fires have become much more ferocious and more frequent.

It’s 2025. Everything is up in the air. All these institutions and systems of government that we’ve come to rely upon, and to some extent, have been taking for granted, are all in upheaval. This is more upheaval on top of that, and I think the key is to develop a healthy relationship with all of it at arm’s distance. Otherwise, you’re going to succumb to chronic anxiety and fear.

We happen to live in a truly unique and irreplaceable corner of the world, and, no, I don’t think we would ever just pull up the stakes and relocate completely. Like, that isn’t even on the table.

Rich spoke to Adam Skolnick from his Malibu home on Feb. 16, 2025, where he has lived with his wife, Julie Piatt, and their four children for more than 20 years.