"Two months ago, Napa County's Cleary Reserve was a cathedral of green. Oak branches arched over the entry road. Salamanders flickered in the brush, and a century-old lodge stood ready for students. At its heart lay a rare redwood grove the most inland natural stand in California where waterfalls spilled through its shaded canyon. Now, it's a graveyard. Ninety percent of the nearly 500-acre nonprofit preserve in Aetna Springs has been reduced to ash by the Pickett Fire,"
"The Pickett Fire in Aug. ripped through a stand of ponderosa and douglas fir trees on the Cleary Reserve in Aetna Springs. Jeff Alvarez, the reserve's biologist, surveys burned timber and surroundings, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat) A Douglas fir cone, burned by the Pickett Fire at the Cleary Reserve in Aetna Springs, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025."
"A singed pine tree and a black oak in the Pickett Fire burn scar at the Cleary Reserve in Aetna Springs, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat) Biologist Jeff Alvarez strolls through the Cleary Reserve which burned during the Pickett Fire in Aug., Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat) The Cleary Reserve's library of books and historical notes burned during the Pickett Fire in Aetna Springs, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025."
Two months before late September 2025, Napa County's Cleary Reserve featured oak-canopied roads, salamanders in the brush, a century-old lodge, and a rare inland redwood grove with waterfalls. The Pickett Fire in August reduced about 90% of the nearly 500-acre nonprofit preserve in Aetna Springs to ash, leaving blackened tree skeletons, stone ruins, and burned historical structures. The fire ripped through ponderosa and Douglas fir stands, charred a Douglas fir cone, and destroyed the reserve's library of books and historical notes. Early regrowth appears as bracken ferns sprout and wildlife such as a Western rattlesnake uses shafts of light.
Read at www.pressdemocrat.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]