The anguish of living in a burn scar takes a toll.

By Jane Braxton Little

Half a mile south of what's left of the old Gold Rush-era town of
Greenville, California, Highway 89 climbs steeply in a series of
S-turns as familiar to me as my own backyard. From the top of that
grade, I've sometimes seen bald eagles soaring over the valley that
stretches to the base of Keddie Peak, the northernmost mountain in
California's Sierra Nevada range.

Today, stuck at the bottom thanks to endless road work, I try to
remember what these hillsides looked like before the Dixie fire
torched them in a furious 104-day climate-change-charged rampage
across nearly one million acres, an area larger than the state of
Delaware. They were so green then, pines, cedars, and graceful Douglas
firs mixed with oaks pushing through the thick conifer foliage in a
quest for light and life. Today, I see only slopes studded with
charred stumps and burnt trees jackstrawed across the land like so
many giant pick-up-sticks.

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/climate-change-up-close-personal/

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