September 6, 2020
On July 22, 2020, a thunderstorm rolled through northeastern California, and lightning strikes started several fires, including one in Lava Beds National Monument. Named the Caldwell Fire, it roared through over 83,000 acres before it was contained. The area, dense with ponderosa and lodgepole pine, had not seen fire in over 40 years.
About 70% of the park was scorched. If you do a Google image search of Lava Beds National Monument, you get photos like these that show trees and grasses growing on the perimeters of the lava beds . . .
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| From here |
. . . and also throughout lava fields.
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| From here |
When we turned into the park, we didn't realize what had occurred there six weeks before.
