josh & sara's holiday letter

Last year our card featured a photo of a tree on some land that Sara and I got out in the Eastern Sierras. We spent some amazing time there in early Summer and fell in love: we saw all kinds of wildlife (even a bear!); got caught in freak rainstorms; stood in awe of rainbows spanning the Nevada mountain ranges; and began fixing up roads and clearing out understory or, as Californians understand it: ground fuel. 

Early July, a lightning strike ignited a small fire ~15 miles away. The Forest Service was sure they had it under control; decades of fire suppression, years of drought, and the dawn of climate change had other ideas. Less than 2 weeks later, the Sugar Fire became the first mega-fire of 2021, surging over mountain ridges, ripping through parched forests, and eventually overtaking our little sanctuary. 

We cried and researched (a lot), and made a plan. Our first visit post-fire, the ground still smoldered. Acres of trees were reduced to black sticks and ash - some burned so hot they burnt all the way through the roots, leaving massive holes in the ground that looked like dinosaur footprints. For months post-fire, hundreds of trees made an eerie noise that sounded like a last gasp effort to pump sap and water to their burnt wounds and remains. Our tiny shed of tools and a side-by-side was gone, leaving only steel skeletons and melted pools of aluminum. 

If you’ve never been to a place recently impacted by wildfire, please go. It feels like the seeing the future of climate change, and nature's destructive power brings me to my knees. Nature’s regenerative power is equally humbling. Within weeks there were green shoots and wildflowers popping through the ash. It was a good reminder that, even if we humans don’t get our act together, Mother Earth will endure. 

Sara and I worked ridiculously hard on wildfire restoration and other projects to turn the death of one dream into the beginning of another. We bought a tractor and are now adept at working a front loader, pallet forks, backhoe and box grader. We hauled hundreds of pounds of materials up a steep incline and, with Sara's friend Bob, built a small deck (on a previously inaccessible piece of mountainside that had been covered in dense ground cover). It overlooks a hundred miles of mountain ranges and vibrant sky; and, next Spring, it will host a canvas tent with a  wood-burning stove for my family’s visit to memorialize my Dad.

I built a pit toilet out of scrap materials and it was actually kind of awesome. Sara graded a few miles of mountain road so that a delivery truck could bring in a container in which we could safely park our ATV and store our tools through the rugged Sierra winter. I cut down nearly a dozen burnt trees and hauled them to a drying rack that my friend Jesse helped me build in order to mill them for lumber on the portable saw mill we towed up there in my friend Ben’s truck. We brought home burnt manzanita, lacquered it, and gave it to Mom’s church for their Remembrance Altar. I removed debris and built a path with the mulch of small burned trees and shrubs through an area that, next year, will become my Dad’s memorial grove. And, tree-loving me, I planted over 100 seedlings and saplings up and down the mountainside, along with several acres’ worth of native and restorative grasses, and stomped a few hundred acorns and viable pine cones into the ground.  The first tree I planted was an incense cedar - a tree considered sacred by many Indigenous tribes.

On the last day that Sara and I were there this month, we looked out and knew that we had done everything we could for our little Sanctuary. The land is covered in a lot of snow now. We don’t know what Spring will bring. While we continue to mourn what is lost, we eagerly wait for new life. As a friend put it to me, “You have always seen both the beauty of the sanctuary as well as the potential. And while the beauty might be a little harder to see now, the potential is as clear as ever.”  She's right.

Oh, and one more thing. The mountain brought us new friends, Jerry and Estee, who’ve lived up the road for ~20 years. We met Jerry just before the fire.  And after the fire, Jerry helped us haul out the debris, gave invaluable advice on important tools and tips and tricks, brought over his massive backhoe to help clear the space for our container (he likes to remind me that his backhoe is bigger than mine), and he and Estee hosted numerous nights at their cabin, talking about life on the mountain over beers, tequila, and a little brandy.  

I never thought I’d know so much about fire as I know now. I never thought I’d own a chainsaw (and now I own two). I never thought I’d know so intimately the smell of a burnt forest. I also thought I’d never know the joy of seeing small green shoots, making new friends (on mountaintops!), and realizing that, even in the deepest places of grief, there is life. And where there is life, there is hope.