As many of you know, the still-raging Dixie Fire, and newer Morgan Fire, recently entered and caused the closure of Lassen Volcanic NP in California.
You may also know the fires have destroyed Lassen’s Mount Harkness lookout tower (built 1931, at 8,000 ft.), in addition to cabins at Juniper Lake, and much of the park's pine forests and wildflower meadows.
What you may not know is of the approx. 100,000 acres of the NP, 40,000 acres have now been consumed by the fires – more than one-third of the Park.
(These are people fighting fire, with fire, near Lassen's Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center, three days ago.)
In this summer of extreme drought, it strikes fear in my heart that such destruction is also possible, at any moment, in the woods of Oregon and in my bone-dry region of Wash. state – North Cascades NP, Olympic NP, Mount Rainier NP, Mount St. Helens Nat’l Monument. Fingers crossed until the autumn rains.
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I hope to see older LF images of Lassen, before the fires, in future threads, as a gesture of remembrance (and warning), plus images not-yet-taken of forest regeneration as a gesture of hope.
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