Between Los Angeles and Bakersfield on our way north to Napa last week, we passed no less than two wide swaths of fire-damaged hills. Later on that same drive, we passed a number of fire trucks addressing a fire that had recently licked its way to the edge of CA 4 near Martinez. Traveling […]

   The giant Sequoia known as General Sherman that stands in California’s Sequoia National Park is more than 2000 years old. It is 1000 years younger than the oldest known Sequoia. Interestingly, these forest giants require wildfires in order to germinate their seeds and grow new trees. In other words, these living trees have been around for at least 3000 years, and have survived through the life giving natural occurrence of forest fires. Today, thanks to the human encroachment of creeping suburbia, forest fires are suddenly  now a scourge that have to be dealt with – to read between the lines of the lumber industry  – by clearcutting, of course.