There are several miracles related to the fire.  One is an apple tree at the stables.  It’s about five feet tall, just a small thing.  But it produces tiny apples every season.  Rumor has it that it was planted by a grieved person who lost a beloved horse.  What better gesture than to plant an apple tree.

So we all had a big question in our minds after the fire, “What happened to the apple tree?  Was it destroyed?”

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The fire really changed an important part of our life in an unexpected way.  We were leasing a horse at the stables not far from our house.  When the fire roared through Monday night it continued on and burned through the stables.  The big wooden barn burned to the ground. 

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The rain this weekend wasn’t as bad as expected.  It was cold by Southern California standards.  But that doesn’t affect runoff.  We were treated to snow and ice atop Santiago Peak (over 5000 ft).  All the radio towers up there glistened in a sheath of ice.  Modjeska Canyon was under mandatory evacuation again due to the fear of mudslides.  But rumor has it that only 30% of the people actually evacuated.  When it was all said and done, there wasn’t much mud on roads this time.  There are signs of minor erosion in the hills behind our house but no gaping chasms.

The 2007 Santiago Fire was about seven weeks ago now.  The fire left the hillsides behind our house bare and covered with ash.  There were two kinds of ash.  There was the black ash that pretty much covered everything.  Then there were patches of white ash where a larger shrub or small tree had once stood.

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