Living with Wildfire
A story of reconstruction and resiliency at Rancho Mariposa
Cathy Monroe’s phone buzzed at 1:00 a.m. and her nephew’s voice jolted her from sleep with a two-word warning: look east. She gazed at the ridge toward Potter Valley—a view she’d lived with for more than half a century—and saw a shifting orange glow emanating behind it. Cathy is no stranger to fires, her home had burned down 10 years ago. She knew she had minutes to evacuate. She grabbed her dog Terra, drove down to the barnyard, and freed her two horses. As the fire crested the ridge and hurtled down the valley, ripping through hundreds of yards of forest every few seconds, Cathy left Rancho Mariposa to join a caravan of fleeing neighbors.
What she and everyone in her community left behind that night will never be recovered. But neither will they walk away. A home is greater than the sum of what's grown from the land or what's built on it. Time and time again Californians rebuild and survive in the wake of destruction. Secondary succession is the process by which biological life recolonizes an area following a major disturbance. As catastrophic as the disturbance may be, surviving nutrients and seeds allow for life to flourish once more. So too do the people temporarily displaced by wildfire heal and regenerate.
The October 2017 fire that tore through Redwood Valley, a tight-knit community in Mendocino County’s wine country, was one of many in Northern California that season, killing dozens and annihilating thousands of homes and structures across the state. The stories of narrow escapes, infernal chaos and widespread ruin tell a fraction of what’s become a new normal for the Western United States. Warmer temperatures induced by rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions have further dried out the vegetation that serves as fuel for advancing fires. A century of strict wildfire suppression has then caused these fuels to accumulate to a degree never seen before. Layer an extensive electrical network over this kindling, add aggressive winds, and all it takes is a spark to incite untold destruction. Wildfires are inherently unpredictable, but the conditions that lead to their existence are not.
The Monroes and Rancho Mariposa
At 73, Cathy has bright white hair that she pulls into a braid, lively green eyes, and an even tan from stewarding the land at Rancho Mariposa for more than 50 years. While deployed in the Pacific during World War II, Cathy’s father, Harold Easterbrook, dreamed of becoming a farmer. In 1962 he, his wife, Louise, and family—including a teenage Cathy—left their farm in Santa Clara County and moved to Rancho Mariposa in Mendocino County, just over 100 miles north of San Francisco. Ian, Cathy’s son, was raised on the ranch and since the pandemic began lives there full-time with his wife, Susan, and toddler, Kai. He speaks of Rancho Mariposa with the wonder of a child and the reverence of an adult deeply in love with the land. From a scenic outlook on the hill he points to the cabins and trailers spread throughout the valley and names the web of relatives, extended relations, friends, and guests in each. He speaks of them all with familial affinity.
Cathy spent her career as an elementary school teacher and has dedicated her life to educational and environmental activism. After graduating college, she and several of her classmates started an alternative elementary school on the ranch. Mariposa School utilized its setting to help children foster a deeper connection to the land. The school was only on the ranch for its initial year but served the community for over 25 years. After it moved Cathy pursued a career in public education, where she helped establish the Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project—a program designed to teach students about the natural world. Her son Ian has also dedicated his life to environmental issues, teaching courses on climate solutions at Stanford University and founding the sustainable investing firm Etho Capital. Both he and his mother largely attribute their passion for nature to a life spent at Rancho Mariposa. With retirement, Cathy was able to spend more time on farming, which she believes to be “such an honest form of exchange, it feels like you’re bringing it up from the earth to share with others.”
The historic ranch is nestled on the northern end of Redwood Valley. Its structures emerge from groves of redwoods, oaks, firs, madrones, and bays. A redwood bridge crosses over a stream that runs down the hillside to the valley’s floor. Depressions in the ground mark the locations of homes of its original Indigenous Pomo inhabitants, and stone pestles and mortars used for grinding acorns collected from them were stored in the loft above the historic sheep barn. Horses, sheep, and pigs are penned near a large garden and orchard. Heirloom apple trees grow among raspberry, boysenberry, and blueberry bushes. Unique varieties of grapes and currants sprout next to fruit trees of plums, pears, and figs. A medley of perennial flowers and flowering bushes line the terraced stone walls of a smaller garden up the hill. In 1932 one of the estate’s earliest residents, Homer Mitten, wrote “The Enchanted Canyon,” a children’s book inspired by the area’s natural beauty, particularly the moss-covered redwoods lining Mariposa Creek. “I thought of the stories and myths of certain places and of fairies, and I felt that surely, if fairies exist, they must inhabit such places as this,” he wrote in its preface.
Rancho Mariposa was 1300 acres when Cathy’s parents bought the land in an estate sale back in the 1960s. Throughout the decades since, segments were sold to family and neighbors, but Cathy retained ownership of the 160 acres that made up its heart: the original ranch house, gardens, sheds, and barns. Over its storied history Rancho Mariposa has served as a nexus for the local community, and the collection of families and friends who have lived there have tirelessly worked to create a space worth sharing. Almost everything is oriented around community and designed to bring people together: the dozens of weddings they’ve hosted in the forests, meadows, and large fir-poled and redwood-sided barn, their neighborhood winter solstice bonfire, the school field trips for their children's classes, and the disc golf course woven throughout the looming trees and houses. Even the ranch’s amenities were built to accommodate large numbers, from the 12-person sauna to the 26-foot redwood picnic bench.
Rancho Mariposa offered so much to the community that when The Big House—the ranch’s main house built in 1919—burnt down in a structure fire in 2007, locals came together to raise $25,000 for its reconstruction. It was at this time that Ian left his job in Washington, D.C. at an international development nonprofit to move back home and help his mother with the myriad burdens of rebuilding. The house wasn’t insured because it was so old and had no foundation. Without the communal rallying of money and countless hours of donated time the Monroes wouldn’t have been able to construct their replacement home.
Though losing The Big House was an immense tragedy for the Monroes, it didn’t compare to the wildfire that would rip through Rancho Mariposa and much of the Redwood Valley community 10 years later. What made the Redwood Valley Complex Fire—currently the 12th deadliest fire in California's history—especially devastating for her and Ian was watching all their neighbors who had been so supportive to them go through the same experience, only on a much larger scale. “Here we had nine of our neighbors that got trapped and died. On a normal day that would be the biggest national news but because it happened at the same time as all these other huge fires that same night, it just kind of got lost. There was some coverage but it felt like we were part of this void of destruction,” Ian says.
Cathy returned to Rancho Mariposa a few weeks after the 2017 fire. The land, previously a dynamic and verdant paradise, resembled a moonscape. The historic barn, homestead cabins, antique farming equipment, multiple gardens, orchard, innumerable family heirlooms, and artwork made by friends and family, were all reduced to a fine ash and rubble. The ecosystem, once abundant with trees and rich vegetation, was now replaced with the blackened remains of tree trunks, reaching through embers and scorched dirt like skeletal fingers.
The Wake of Wildfire
The Rancho Mariposa of 2021 is in a transformational state. It’s been four years since the Redwood Valley fire but its ruin is apparent in everything that wasn’t reduced to ash. The dried out dead trunks of trees line the ridges across the valley and sturdy redwoods that survived are blackened around their bases. Piles of the few pieces of recovered metal and iron farming equipment sit next to idle bulldozers and stacked culverts. Daily life has often felt like an exercise in triage. The first priority was for FEMA to haul out the burnt material. Then the Monroes had to fix their spring-fed water system, create temporary housing, and clear dangerous material from the property. Even still, the to-do list appears dauntingly endless. Every day is filled with completing one task after another, all done while processing the trauma of what happened and participating in a lawsuit against PG&E, the electric utility company responsible for starting the Redwood Valley Fire.
After the wildfire was contained, PG&E engaged in a process of triage of its own. The utility’s work crews visited Rancho Mariposa and cleared debris from power lines. In January 2019, PG&E, facing over $30 billion in liabilities for fire-related damages, declared bankruptcy. Months later a majority of the 67,000 fire victims voted for a $13.5 billion settlement paid in cash and stocks. The Monroes and many members of their community voted against it because they believed it put hedge funds ahead of fire victims and that it relied too heavily on overvalued and risky PG&E stocks, which have only plummeted since as predicted. But the money’s allocation has been slow. A KQED investigation in May 2021 found that the Fire Victim Trust, the group in charge of distributing reimbursement, had spent $51 million in overhead costs while paying $7 million to the victims. Standing near a horse named Wildfire—one of the ones that survived after Cathy opened the corral gates—Ian discusses the case, saying that “we still haven’t seen a penny of PG&E money, nor has anyone in the area that we’re aware of.”
Cathy and Ian have been able to finance the work they’ve done so far with their savings, incomes, and the insurance payout from some of the homes on the property, but most of the historic ranch buildings, antiques, forests, gardens, and orchards were not covered by their policy. There’s still a tremendous degree of uncertainty about the PG&E settlement and how they’ll afford the cost of rebuilding. But the Monroes say the expected income from the lawsuit won’t even come close to covering what the fire took from them and their community. Ian goes silent for a moment, then says “some neighbors have rebuilt very fast, but there are also empty lots for sale where the residents died and that’s a constant reminder to us and everybody else in the community that drives by them on a daily basis the consequences of how badly things can go.”
Reimagined Landscape
Sixty five miles southeast of Rancho Mariposa, Rick Kavinoky fells a dead tree to make way for a new path on the upper ridge at Monan’s Rill. The sounds of his chainsaw are replaced by the low murmurs of splitting wood, a slight whoosh, the cracking of nearby branches, then a concluding thud. A sharp white beard covers a gentle yet hardened face underneath a wide-brimmed hat. He’s finished his morning work and drives back down to the assemblage of trailers that have temporarily replaced 12 of Monan’s Rill’s original 13 houses that burned down in the Glass Fire of September 2020. As he drives he points to groves of burnt trees marked with painted blue dots, each representing one of the 2,000 oaks and firs scheduled for removal after being decimated in the fire. While they stand—dead and dry—they continue to threaten the piece of land in Sonoma County he’s called home for almost 50 years.
“It’s the perfect storm,” says Ben Jacobs, a career fire management professional. The recent record-breaking fire seasons are a result of climate change creating more favorable conditions for intense wildfires and the state’s 100-plus-year regime of severe wildfire suppression. Jacobs began the first 12 years of his career working on fire suppression with hotshot and engine crews until he spent three years with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho and “found prescribed fire like a religion.” He had realized there that California was doing more damage by suppressing fires than they could by starting them. Jacobs spent the rest of his career with the National Park Service as a fuels management specialist, burn boss, and fire use operational planner.
Jacobs' career coincided with a recent resurgence of employing fire to combat wildfire. Prescribed burns, as they're called, reduce fuels available for rampant wildfires, help restore native woodlands, diminish habitat for invasive pests and disease, and provide numerous other benefits for local wildlife, both human and non-human. Since fire is endemic to California’s ecosystems, the general idea is to introduce them in a manner that’s more manageable and less destructive than what would happen had they arisen spontaneously. But the notion of intentionally introducing fire into a landscape is anathema to many. Jacobs believes that the primordial fear of fire, combined with policies that incentivize risk-averse behavior, have prevented widespread adoption of this practice.
Transforming California’s policy landscape is a vital component of transitioning to widespread adoption of prescribed burning. Because even with all the necessary precautions the possibility of an undesired outcome is present. After all, wildfire is unfailingly wild. “I’ve always said throughout my prescribed burning career that I’m one wind shift away from a career-ending event,” Jacobs says. One of the central contradictions here is that not doing anything is worse than doing something. But those hesitant to accept prescribed burns have legitimate reasons. Smoke from burns reduces air quality and can create unhealthy breathing conditions. There’s also the worry that prescribed burns can be traumatic for people who recently experienced devastating wildfires. Allowing citizens to spectate the prescribed fires, however, can help reduce the fear of them. Education is critical here, and some people within California are uniquely positioned to lead this transition.
Clint McKay holds his hands in front of his chest, palms down. “Low and slow,” he says, describing how the Wappo and Pomo people have conducted cultural burns for time immemorial. Clint is the Indigenous Education Coordinator for Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County. The 3,200-acre preserve resides within the traditional homeland of the Wappo people and Clint helps advise their environmental research and land management practices. After conducting a 7-acre burn in June of 2016, Pepperwood hoped to further expand its prescribed burn program but many within the local community resisted the idea. Clint helped alleviate worry at a community meeting after he presented on the importance of cultural burns and how they would benefit the preserve. However, two weeks afterwards the Tubbs Fire devastated many parts of Northern California, including the Pepperwood Preserve. Now they’re pursuing the practice more aggressively.
Prescribed burns are a western offshoot of cultural burns, a tradition practiced by countless generations of Indigenous people. While prescribed burns are predominately anthropocentric—designed to protect human populations and constructions—cultural burns are more comprehensive in their purpose. Clint describes how people are on the same plane as the natural world, so the devastation that affects people is the same for all life. In this way, the cultural burns his people practice benefit humans, animals, and vegetation alike. Cultural burns also have more multifaceted merits than protection alone: for the Wappo and Pomo people they’re also critical for improving hunting, gathering and preparing food, managing native pests, providing quality material for basketry, and maintaining trails. The practice is rooted in traditional ecological knowledge, a different perspective from western science but one that is equally vital for better understanding and stewarding the natural world. Indigenous science, as Clint describes it, comes from real life experience; its dataset is built from the knowledge of legions of preceding generations.
Regrowth
Cathy walks around Rancho Mariposa in orange Crocs and a woven bag strapped across her shoulder, her dog Terra never far from her side. Yoga has kept her agile in her retirement years. Ian and her grandson join her at the pool—built for recreation and garden water storage—that's usually filled with spillover water from the spring-fed tanks. A group of friends and family join in the annual community ritual of scrubbing algae from its sloped floor and walls. Kai just turned 2 but he pitches in, playfully hosing the sides that tower above him.
Clint McKay speaks of the “seven-generation principle” as a way of guiding decision-making, that the decisions made in the present should consider their effects seven generations in the future. Reconceptualizing the relationship to this land is a vital component of ensuring a safe and thriving home for the many generations of people that will live in what is now called California. Despite the enormity of their loss the Monroes see opportunities to learn and reconstruct Rancho Mariposa into a more resilient version of itself. Like Monan’s Rill they’ve embarked on a journey to steward the land instead of control it.
They’re fortifying the outside of their homes with concrete, clearing vegetation from the understory to mitigate available fuels for future fires, and improving their water system to help with drought. They’d like to investigate whether they can administer prescribed burns on Rancho Mariposa with all the remaining dead trees, but between the endlessly long list of rebuilding tasks and insecure funding it’s likely a distant ambition. “We basically would like to rebuild what was lost in a way that’s more fire resilient and regenerative,” Ian explains, adding that “ideally the ranch will be a kind of lab for living with climate change and trying to mitigate it at the same time.”
The original owners of the ranch built a pond in the shape of an infinity symbol tucked away into the hillside. A vibrant purple Japanese maple that survived the fire sits just beside the intersection. In a disturbance-dependent ecosystem the concept of regeneration is well-understood. Just as a butterfly goes through metamorphosis, so too can be said of Rancho Mariposa, which means “Butterfly Ranch.” The frame of the house under construction is partly built with recovered fir and redwoods salvaged from the fire, their sturdy beams supporting the roof for the Monroes new home.
Cathy wrote a series of wildfire haikus published in the Mendocino Arts magazine conveying different details of that fateful night in 2017 and the months afterwards. Next to a picture of a metal stream flowing from where a motorcycle once stood, a stanza reads:
generosity
community heart to heart
resuscitation
References
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB332
- https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-redwood-fire-evacautions-20171104-story.html
- https://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/2007/09/07/tragedy-and-rebirth-anatomy-of-a-fire/
- https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-a-prescribed-fire.htm#:~:text=Prescribed%20fire%20is%20a%20planned,of%20meeting%20the%20burn%20objectives .
- https://www.pepperwoodpreserve.org/2016/06/10/our-first-prescribed-burn-a-big-success/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/business/energy-environment/pge-bankruptcy-ends.html#:~:text=PG%26E%20sought%20bankruptcy%20protection%20in,destroyed%20the%20town%20of%20Paradise .
- https://www.kqed.org/news/11791785/pge-axes-requirement-for-newsom-to-ok-13-5-billion-settlement-with-wildfire-victims
- https://www.npr.org/2019/12/07/785775074/pg-e-announces-13-5-billion-settlement-of-claims-linked-to-california-wildfires
- https://www.kqed.org/news/11872328/survivors-stuck-in-limbo-as-pge-fire-victim-trust-pays-out-50-million-in-fees
- https://www.uusd.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=572732&type=d&pREC_ID=1067693
- https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/lbfd0m2f/top20_deadliest.pdf