California Wildfires
Living in California means living with fire. The forests are sick, the canyons and valleys parched, the deserts unforgiving. Everywhere—north to south—has been touched by flame. Trinity County, Shasta, Humboldt, Siskiyou, the Sierras, even here near my home in southern California. The fires have been relentless. They’ve destroyed homes, lives, ecosystems—entire histories.
Over the years, I’ve photographed what I saw. Sometimes it was the aftermath: blackened landscapes, trees reduced to skeletons, skies still heavy with smoke. Other times, it was the unexpected—like the moment in Trinity County when I came across a mountain lion.
The forest around it was scorched and smoldering, the ground still warm with ash. The mountain lion lay motionless, utterly spent, its golden eyes dulled by exhaustion and shock. It had survived the fire—but just barely. I raised my camera slowly. That image has stayed with me ever since—not just as a photograph, but as a symbol. Of fragility. Of quiet resilience. Of a wild world struggling to endure.
In those moments, I don’t just feel like a photographer—I feel like a witness to something larger than any one fire. A changing climate. A vanishing balance. A call to remember what we’re losing, and what still holds on. The land burns, and yet, somehow, life returns. I keep photographing, hoping the images help others see that too.
We left the mountain lion and continued into the old growth forest surveying the devastation in our UTV. 20 min later we returned on the same trail, the mountain lion was gone.
