A Breath of Fresh Air Spring just came blowing in here didn’t it? Last week in my home office I had rags and tape around the seals of this lousy door-hanging job I did so I wouldn’t freeze to death while I worked down here. Now a nice breeze is blowing through the wide-open window behind my back. Last week I would have died of hypothermia in a couple of hours if that window had been open. The 60-degree weather on Sunday meant that I could finally traipse up the hill across the street and see what all of the tree cutting and commotion was about up there about a month ago. We’re lucky in my neighborhood because for almost a mile across the ridge above us there is a 500-yard swath of nothing but forest. We can all be kids up there if we want to. The kids and I, nets and bug catchers in hand, set out for one of our springtime strolls. But this time it was much different. The forest up there has changed radically. It was difficult to get around all of the trees that have been dropped. Where there once was a crowded, dark canopy, much of the forest floor is open to the sky. Then my daughter asked something that had been on my mind: “Dad, why are they cutting down live trees too?” There were several downed incense cedars and sugar pines that had been alive among the many beetle-killed trees. I answered that I didn’t know. But then I stood back and took a look at the large area that had been cut and it dawned on me. This is how it’s supposed to look. “What?” she asked. I repeated, “This is how it’s really supposed to look.” She replied, “I like it the other way.” I don’t like it the other way—on a whole lot of levels. The forest on the hill above my house has been transformed. It looks just how forestry expert Tom Bonnicksen explained it to me when I interviewed him about the bark beetle infestation. Whoever is responsible for this land is doing just what Bonnicksen said we need to do. And it’s beautiful, now that I see it. I’m a volunteer ranger for the San Gorgonio Wilderness Association. I’ve been through most of that wilderness, and now the hill above me is starting to look like some of the places I’ve seen there. There will soon be small meadows separating thinly spaced, large trees. The oaks have already started climbing straight toward the sun from their formerly angled, tortured poses they had to endure to find a place in the sun for their leaves. Native flowers and bushes will soon be sprouting in areas where once there were only thick bunches of dry pine needles. In the early morning hours of Oct. 26, 2003, if the wind had shifted from northerly to southerly, it would have raged through this thickly forested, uninhabited area in no time at all, creating a mile-long firestorm that would have raced to the shore of the lake. It would have shot from branch to branch nearly as fast as the wind, never touching the ground. This area would have been the fuel for the inferno that would have destroyed the whole of what had once been the old Switzerland development. Lake Gregory today would look like Lake Silverwood does now—blackened shores with no homes. No, I don’t like it the other way. If the wind had changed and the fire would have burned through there, our brave firefighters would not have been able to save our town. Today, they would have a fighting chance in the same situation. We went up to the old rope swing that hangs from a giant oak, hundreds of years old, which stands at the top of an outcropping cliff. From there you can see the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains, and you can also see something else—the alternative. Across the valley, above the road to Cedarpines Park from the Valley of Enchantment, is an unbroken sea of brown that makes my heart race just looking at it. If I won the lottery today it would be gone next week, I guarantee you. I can see a day coming when there may be deer grazing on the ridge above my house. Or perhaps one day people will build houses on this land. If they do, I hope they will look at how the land is now, and enjoy it the way it is, instead of immediately starting a new pine plantation on their property. Because that’s the way it’s supposed to look.
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