Fire.

Apparently Big Basin State Park is gone. I remember taking the girls to camp in Memorial Park just north of there. I know my affinity for coast redwoods is abnormal. I can’t help myself. I grew up in southern Oklahoma where scrubby trees were stunted by drought and worthless soil. I didn’t know about beautiful forests until I moved to California when I was 23 years old.

For a while in CA, I had a house in a redwood grove. When I was forced to move from there, I went out and spoke to each one of my trees. When I moved to Oregon, I planted a grove of my own. If you rub the foliage in your hands, it smells like limes.

Kate has a house now in a forest on the Russian River. Fires everywhere. Her entire neighborhood has been evacuated. Luckily, during the work week the lives in her house in Sausalito. She won’t be going to the river this weekend. Elizabeth says today, doing her work in Yellowstone, she cannot see the mountains because of the smoke from CA.

I remember during the last CA fires, POTUS said, “Those people should just keep things raked up out there? This is what redwood duff looks like:

The forest floors are dense with it. Sure. Just rake up the thousands of acres of that and put it where? I live in terror of the solutions that man poses.