California has too many wildfires during the year to hope to record “the big picture.” So much of our landscape is fire-adapted, the chaparral in particular. And here in California we do love to build homes in the chaparral. Not just homes, entire towns. We build homes in a natural environment that needs to burn to live and thrive. And we build homes in the mountains that need to burn occasionally for environmental health. Then we put firefighters and all kinds of inhabitants (including other-than-human) at risk saving those homes and saving us.
There are books about this. There are books about what we might do to mitigate this. I just want to offer a photographic record from my own perspective. This is an abbreviated record. There are so many more fires that have occurred just in the southwestern Mojave Desert region in this time span. So many more.
Sheep Fire Lone Pine Canyon Wrightwood Winter 2005
Yucca Valley Fire from Spring Valley Lake Winter 2006
Cajon Fire August 2007
Cajon Pass on fire August 2007
Wildfire in Phelan September 2007
Wildfire in Western San Gabriel Mountains April 2008
Wildfire in Phelan 2008
Station Fire from RSF August – October 2009
Fire in West Cajon Valley 2010
- Cajon Fire Summer 2011
Cajon Fire from Highway 395 Summer 2011
Cajon Fire Summer 2011 from RSF
- Fire in San Gabriels from RSF Summer 2012
Rainshadow Farm 