As the skies over Mt. Jefferson were building up to release their first set of fall storms onto the central Oregon Cascades, I was content to watch the gathering storm for hours. Occasionally a rainbow would grace the sky with a ribbon of color, sometimes two.

I returned to this spot recently, after the devastating wildfires of 2020. There is no longer a forest. For almost as far as you can see, there is only a post apocalyptic burned landscape. This small knoll is now a scorched and blackened patch. None of the trees viewed here survived. The fires consumed almost as much land as the size of Delaware, destroyed several small towns, and burned thousands of homes. As the fire sped up the canyon below here, the Sheriffs Department rushed up and down the canyon to save the lives of its scattered residents and visitors. At one point they clocked the fire moving up the canyon at 21 miles an hour.