A few days ago, before the fires began to burn again, I took one of my seasonal treks through California. I left my house in Fresno, which sits in the middle of the state, and drove south past miles of flattened earth and imported water.

On the outskirts of Kern County, I crossed the Aqueduct, the 444-mile-long concrete river that moves snowmelt from mountain to farm to city and allows us to thumb our noses at nature. There I landed in an orchard that belongs to the most defiant Californian of all, Stewart Resnick. He grows...