For years Hatch and I lived a mile from National Forest and often trained our dogs there - near where the 2021 Caldor Fire started. It burned all the way to Tahoe, 221.835 acres total, I've wanted to revisit, to see the forest coming back, but logging trucks on the rough little road gave me pause. Maybe they'd take a holiday for Thanksgiving:
Chance Discoveries
for Hatch
No logging trucks on Caldor Road today -
steep one-lane, no shoulder, winding thru manzanita thickets
up into forest. It burned two years ago, salvageable logs
barreling down this road non-stop now. But even loggers
might take holiday. It's Thanksgiving - my first since you passed.
My mission: to see if your almost-record Interior Live Oak
survived the fire. As we used to say, Trust Hatch to get us into
out-of-the-way difficult-to-get-to places and make
discoveries there. Now, thickets of manzanita skeletons mixed
with burned-out tree wells, jackstraw fallen trees.
Tall pines still standing scorched at the base, their canopies
still alive. Foot-high Ponderosa saplings everywhere.
A fresh Sugar Pine cone - mother-tree stands beside me.
Tiny shoots of Incense Cedar. Black Oak leaves
turned golden for Thanksgiving. I can't find your Live Oak
in this mess. There never was a trail, it was
only chance and your love of exploring led us there.
How we find the best things, it seems, by chance
or destiny. How I found you as you found me.
~ Taylor Graham
