Good stuff, Holly, again. I'm gonna need to find a new way to start my comments.
I did like the Tolkein reference... a well placed LoTR or Hobbit (or even Silmarillion) reference never fails to spark my interest.
Beyond that, yep... "you can't unburn a forest."
I've always known, intellectually, that forest fire can look bad, but is frequently a blessing to a woodland. Entire ecosystems are built on it. (And yes, I know that when that system is put out of balance, a fire can be devastating rather than beneficial.) But I don't think I really grokked that until I saw what happened in the little Northern California spot I called Kokopelli Valley. You hunted there with me several years after that fire, and I think you recognized how healthy the place was looking even then.
I was able to return to Kokopelli Valley while there were still hot spots down deep in the manzanita roots. I wanted to cry when I saw it. The quail were all gone. The jackrabbits had disappeared. The little spring-fed stream was barely a trickle, and the wide spots where the frogs used to live were barren and crusted over with soot. I didn't even see hawks or jays. Everything was exposed. Etc. It really did look like the blasted landscape of Mordor, complete with smoking holes and blackened spires.
I'll shorten this just to say, by the following August deer season, the successional growth was already well on the way to rebuilding the place. Life was returning. The place was different, but it was easy to see that it would be fine, in the long run... and over the consequent seasons that turned out to be the case.
"After the darkest night comes the brightest day." It would be much cooler if I could write it in Tolkein's elvish, but there ya go...
Interestingly enough, in the past week I have visited another hunting spot of mine (in the Valley) that burned last year. It was a normal grass fire that killed few trees. It is lush and gorgeous now, and I stumbled upon a happy colony of endangered tricolored blackbirds there.
I know Caldor will be different. But the earth abides.
Oh yeah, been meaning to say I thought of Kokopelli Valley when I was writing this. I vividly remember that vaguely spooky forest of long-dead trees, no longer black.
If I had been allowed in before April 1, I would have visited my Caldor places last fall, but I didn't feel like getting busted for prohibited disaster tourism. I think it would have been much harder, if it were still smoldering. And probably the greatest mercy will be not finding the remains of any animals that died, but weren't incinerated. I am deeply haunted by my friend Ryan Sabalow's description of burned animals wandering around dazed and irreparably damaged during the Camp Fire. As with hunting, it's not death that bothers me - it's suffering.
Just for the record, and I'm sure you realize this... but I went back to Kokopelli right after it had just re-opened. No illegal sightseeing for me.
I'm with you on the suffering, and the thought of what had to have happened to a lot of animals in that situation always gets me. Because of the dense fuel load, that fire burned hot enough to reduce most carcasses to ash, but I did find a couple of deer in there. Whether the fire killed them or they were dead from something else (lions, poachers, etc.) I'll never know. But when I try to imagine... "haunted" is exactly the word.
Oh, definitely didn't mean to imply that! I just didn't have the opportunity, as badly as I wanted to get in there. It was a very long closure, and rightfully so - it's incredibly steep terrain, and I'm sure that there were serious landslide risks, in addition to the risk of falling trees.
I'm from Scotland, an ecological disaster area whose longtime lack of trees has, over the centuries, become recognized as part of its beauty. Yeah, I know that's weird. Maybe more helpful just to hope with you that this precious bit of California will rapidly renew, and bring loads of lovely mushrooms with it.
It may not be rapid, but it will renew. We will definitely be hunting for morels in the Cal-Zone (couldn't resist) for the next few years. I need to learn more about how severe fire affects mycelium.
I too have recently lost a treasured place to the Walbridge Fire of 2020 in Sonoma County.
Though that fire burned hot and destroyed the forest canopy the aftermath and habitat change has led to a new and changing wildlife habitat in the creek canyon where our camping and cabin compound was once located.
Without a tree canopy to hide prey, Prarie Falcons have left their high rocky peaks and become numerous in the canyon.
Valley Quail are now using our fire debris piles for cover and nesting which is rare in our immediate area with Mountain Quail being the most numerous.
The Black Oaks, White Oaks, Madrones, and Scrub Oaks are sprouting new growth from the base of the dead trees.
Hit hardest, were the Sargent Cypress Stands. No tree trunk saplings here, but numerous 1" high sprouts covering the Serpentine soiled mountains the trees need for existence.
Hit hardest were the Douglas Fir trees. I'm not sure how this species will recover but I do know the standing snags will provide food and homes for the many Pileated Woodpeckers, Pigmy Owls and other wildlife of our area.
Having just returned from a week in our devastated area I can safely report that the Mountain Quail are doing just fine judging from all the Spring territory Chirps ( or crowing) that woke me each morning.
Even though we might grasp the potential for fire recovery intellectually, the fire damage to places that we love and consider to be "ours" still cuts deep emotionally. Some sort of weird brain stem thing where we cling to stasis and get upset when the normal process of chaos and entropy upsets our apple carts.
Every time I drive by the stone or brick chimney remnants from houses that burnt in the 2020 CZU Lightning Fire I get a lump in my throat - for the trauma they have experienced and continue to experience with crushing bureaucracy of insurance companies and the governmental permitting agencies.
Kind of funny, because we evolved as nomads and even set fire to forests and meadows to make them more productive for hunting.
Oh, I'm sure our homes were just as important to us then - as mobile as they may have been - and I'm guessing we were pretty good with understanding where fire might go and thereby avoid burning our homes.
I think, very broadly speaking, we - Americans in particular but probably a lot of other First World denizens too - feel entitled to permanence and everlasting health. Our longstanding economic security feels like a right, not a historical blip. Most humans who live closer to nature know there ain't no guarantees. I live with a foot in each world - one world where I am accustomed to playing by rules and reaping certain rewards (e.g. I have a house, its value will appreciate, if something happens to me, insurance will make me whole), and another world where I am the bringer of death to any legal game animal that makes the mistake of getting within gun range of me - no guarantees are protecting that critter.
Yes, the sense of stasis entitlement does seem to run deep in Americans and dare I say, even deeper for Californians? Just my impression from traveling across the U.S. and residing here in California. Perhaps farmers and ranchers and timber operators are the exception to that observation - their businesses live and die on nature's whims and they are surviving with businesses that operate close to the bone.
As a consulting geologist that specializes in hazards assessments, I comprehend in a global fashion that everything is temporal. And by everything, I mean everything. Nothing is forever in the world and some things have a very short shelf life. And none of us are as safe as we assume. Everything can literally change in the blink of an eye. People get into a car these days without doing basic safety checks and assume that everything will work out just fine every time. Fire is just one of those things that people sort of plan for but most are woefully under insured and don't understand what is involved in getting "whole" again.
My hope is that the local, regional and global catastrophes will wake up some Americans so that they pay more attention to what is happening. I was sort of saddened to see Ukraine war fade into the background of the news cycles pretty quickly. That seems like it may be the single most important historical event in my lifetime if it continues the way it is going. And yet people still can't get enough of the Kardashians or the Will Smith Slap. :(
I think that's a fair assessment, because there's also a left-right divide on this, and California is pretty far left.
Thankfully, Ukraine remains on top of the news outlet I read most consistently (NYT), and I'm proud to say I couldn't identify a Kardashian if one sat in my lap.
I had to cut all news out except for the Economist and The Atlantic. Those are the last rags that provide me with balanced in-depth articles on topics that matter to me. I miss the old days of newspapers and journalism, at least my nostalgia-tinged recollection of it.
Are there any good scientific articles on the science and biology of the 2018-2021 fires? It would be interesting to see what they think lies in store for the areas that have burned severely.
In the process of researching - I plan to gnaw on this a lot! But in my preliminary quests, I got a whole lot of "I don't knows," which is fine - a healthy reminder that as smart as we hairless monkeys are, we don't know everything.
I have been doing some poking around, but mostly on the debris torrent and debris flow front for my geology stuff. If I run across other papers that talk about the biology I'll forward them to you.
Good stuff, Holly, again. I'm gonna need to find a new way to start my comments.
I did like the Tolkein reference... a well placed LoTR or Hobbit (or even Silmarillion) reference never fails to spark my interest.
Beyond that, yep... "you can't unburn a forest."
I've always known, intellectually, that forest fire can look bad, but is frequently a blessing to a woodland. Entire ecosystems are built on it. (And yes, I know that when that system is put out of balance, a fire can be devastating rather than beneficial.) But I don't think I really grokked that until I saw what happened in the little Northern California spot I called Kokopelli Valley. You hunted there with me several years after that fire, and I think you recognized how healthy the place was looking even then.
I was able to return to Kokopelli Valley while there were still hot spots down deep in the manzanita roots. I wanted to cry when I saw it. The quail were all gone. The jackrabbits had disappeared. The little spring-fed stream was barely a trickle, and the wide spots where the frogs used to live were barren and crusted over with soot. I didn't even see hawks or jays. Everything was exposed. Etc. It really did look like the blasted landscape of Mordor, complete with smoking holes and blackened spires.
I'll shorten this just to say, by the following August deer season, the successional growth was already well on the way to rebuilding the place. Life was returning. The place was different, but it was easy to see that it would be fine, in the long run... and over the consequent seasons that turned out to be the case.
"After the darkest night comes the brightest day." It would be much cooler if I could write it in Tolkein's elvish, but there ya go...
Interestingly enough, in the past week I have visited another hunting spot of mine (in the Valley) that burned last year. It was a normal grass fire that killed few trees. It is lush and gorgeous now, and I stumbled upon a happy colony of endangered tricolored blackbirds there.
I know Caldor will be different. But the earth abides.
Oh yeah, been meaning to say I thought of Kokopelli Valley when I was writing this. I vividly remember that vaguely spooky forest of long-dead trees, no longer black.
If I had been allowed in before April 1, I would have visited my Caldor places last fall, but I didn't feel like getting busted for prohibited disaster tourism. I think it would have been much harder, if it were still smoldering. And probably the greatest mercy will be not finding the remains of any animals that died, but weren't incinerated. I am deeply haunted by my friend Ryan Sabalow's description of burned animals wandering around dazed and irreparably damaged during the Camp Fire. As with hunting, it's not death that bothers me - it's suffering.
Just for the record, and I'm sure you realize this... but I went back to Kokopelli right after it had just re-opened. No illegal sightseeing for me.
I'm with you on the suffering, and the thought of what had to have happened to a lot of animals in that situation always gets me. Because of the dense fuel load, that fire burned hot enough to reduce most carcasses to ash, but I did find a couple of deer in there. Whether the fire killed them or they were dead from something else (lions, poachers, etc.) I'll never know. But when I try to imagine... "haunted" is exactly the word.
Oh, definitely didn't mean to imply that! I just didn't have the opportunity, as badly as I wanted to get in there. It was a very long closure, and rightfully so - it's incredibly steep terrain, and I'm sure that there were serious landslide risks, in addition to the risk of falling trees.
I'm from Scotland, an ecological disaster area whose longtime lack of trees has, over the centuries, become recognized as part of its beauty. Yeah, I know that's weird. Maybe more helpful just to hope with you that this precious bit of California will rapidly renew, and bring loads of lovely mushrooms with it.
It may not be rapid, but it will renew. We will definitely be hunting for morels in the Cal-Zone (couldn't resist) for the next few years. I need to learn more about how severe fire affects mycelium.
Holly, love and respect your writings.
I too have recently lost a treasured place to the Walbridge Fire of 2020 in Sonoma County.
Though that fire burned hot and destroyed the forest canopy the aftermath and habitat change has led to a new and changing wildlife habitat in the creek canyon where our camping and cabin compound was once located.
Without a tree canopy to hide prey, Prarie Falcons have left their high rocky peaks and become numerous in the canyon.
Valley Quail are now using our fire debris piles for cover and nesting which is rare in our immediate area with Mountain Quail being the most numerous.
The Black Oaks, White Oaks, Madrones, and Scrub Oaks are sprouting new growth from the base of the dead trees.
Hit hardest, were the Sargent Cypress Stands. No tree trunk saplings here, but numerous 1" high sprouts covering the Serpentine soiled mountains the trees need for existence.
Hit hardest were the Douglas Fir trees. I'm not sure how this species will recover but I do know the standing snags will provide food and homes for the many Pileated Woodpeckers, Pigmy Owls and other wildlife of our area.
Having just returned from a week in our devastated area I can safely report that the Mountain Quail are doing just fine judging from all the Spring territory Chirps ( or crowing) that woke me each morning.
Mother nature will prevail. She just needs time!
Thank you for sharing that! Nature isn't kind, but nature seeks balance and in that sense, it is perfect. I keep trying to remind myself that.
Even though we might grasp the potential for fire recovery intellectually, the fire damage to places that we love and consider to be "ours" still cuts deep emotionally. Some sort of weird brain stem thing where we cling to stasis and get upset when the normal process of chaos and entropy upsets our apple carts.
Every time I drive by the stone or brick chimney remnants from houses that burnt in the 2020 CZU Lightning Fire I get a lump in my throat - for the trauma they have experienced and continue to experience with crushing bureaucracy of insurance companies and the governmental permitting agencies.
Kind of funny, because we evolved as nomads and even set fire to forests and meadows to make them more productive for hunting.
Oh, I'm sure our homes were just as important to us then - as mobile as they may have been - and I'm guessing we were pretty good with understanding where fire might go and thereby avoid burning our homes.
I think, very broadly speaking, we - Americans in particular but probably a lot of other First World denizens too - feel entitled to permanence and everlasting health. Our longstanding economic security feels like a right, not a historical blip. Most humans who live closer to nature know there ain't no guarantees. I live with a foot in each world - one world where I am accustomed to playing by rules and reaping certain rewards (e.g. I have a house, its value will appreciate, if something happens to me, insurance will make me whole), and another world where I am the bringer of death to any legal game animal that makes the mistake of getting within gun range of me - no guarantees are protecting that critter.
Yes, the sense of stasis entitlement does seem to run deep in Americans and dare I say, even deeper for Californians? Just my impression from traveling across the U.S. and residing here in California. Perhaps farmers and ranchers and timber operators are the exception to that observation - their businesses live and die on nature's whims and they are surviving with businesses that operate close to the bone.
As a consulting geologist that specializes in hazards assessments, I comprehend in a global fashion that everything is temporal. And by everything, I mean everything. Nothing is forever in the world and some things have a very short shelf life. And none of us are as safe as we assume. Everything can literally change in the blink of an eye. People get into a car these days without doing basic safety checks and assume that everything will work out just fine every time. Fire is just one of those things that people sort of plan for but most are woefully under insured and don't understand what is involved in getting "whole" again.
My hope is that the local, regional and global catastrophes will wake up some Americans so that they pay more attention to what is happening. I was sort of saddened to see Ukraine war fade into the background of the news cycles pretty quickly. That seems like it may be the single most important historical event in my lifetime if it continues the way it is going. And yet people still can't get enough of the Kardashians or the Will Smith Slap. :(
I think that's a fair assessment, because there's also a left-right divide on this, and California is pretty far left.
Thankfully, Ukraine remains on top of the news outlet I read most consistently (NYT), and I'm proud to say I couldn't identify a Kardashian if one sat in my lap.
I had to cut all news out except for the Economist and The Atlantic. Those are the last rags that provide me with balanced in-depth articles on topics that matter to me. I miss the old days of newspapers and journalism, at least my nostalgia-tinged recollection of it.
Are there any good scientific articles on the science and biology of the 2018-2021 fires? It would be interesting to see what they think lies in store for the areas that have burned severely.
In the process of researching - I plan to gnaw on this a lot! But in my preliminary quests, I got a whole lot of "I don't knows," which is fine - a healthy reminder that as smart as we hairless monkeys are, we don't know everything.
I have been doing some poking around, but mostly on the debris torrent and debris flow front for my geology stuff. If I run across other papers that talk about the biology I'll forward them to you.