Roughly 500 years ago in California’s High Sierra, pine cones dropped to the ground and a cycle began. The Aztec Empire was falling. The printing press was new. The seedlings grew.
Half a millennia later, U.S. Forest Service scientists began testing strategies to save these now ancient and massive trees in the little-known area east of Fresno called the Teakettle Experimental Forest. They had plans to light a huge prescribed burn to clear overgrowth next year.
But then the Garnet Fire ignited amid a lightning storm and scorched all 3,000 federally protected acres on its path through the Sierra National Forest…