In 1992 we watched plumes of smoke from the Cleveland Fire (24,580 acres burned) off Hwy 50 in the South Fork American canyon, up toward Ice House. The next year we trained our dogs on Peavine Ridge, still a gray moonscape but with new green shoots pushing up through ash. The Caldor Fire has burned over 156,000 acres and is just 19% contained. Next year we hope to hike Henrys Diggins off Caldor Road, looking for new green rising from ash.
Off the Forest Road
Henrys Diggins
The 10-point buck, gray squirrel,
jackrabbit, cougar must have thought
the world was ending
when miners felled the tall pines and cedars,
aimed their Monitor
to water-blast the earth into craters
a hundred years ago and more.
Miners took what they could
and left
the craters still there.
Logging roads dodge around the old
pocked mine-field. Scars
overgrown with bear-clover,
tall pines rising from the mined-out depths.
Watch your step.
My dog shows me coyote scat
along the way. Raven says man comes
and goes, the forest stays.
~ Taylor Graham
from Windows of Time and Place: Poems of El Dorado County (www.coldriverpress.org)