Sonoma’s Bloom

WILDFIRES SCOURGED our part of northern California in 2017 and 2018. Whole neighborhoods—hell, whole towns—went up in flames. Fields, meadows and woodlands, tinder-dry from five successive years of drought, burned as hurricane-force winds drove fires into frenzies of devastation. Hundreds of people and thousands of animals died. The mountains were left looking like WWI battlefields, with naked tree trunks jutting up from barren land turned gray with ash.

But from December of 2018 to April of 2019, nature smiled. It rained. Wonderful, gentle soaking rains went on