What we're going to miss

 Agua Caliente, the park, is noted for its palm trees, many of them massive, some half-a-century old. Without them, the personality of the park would be completely altered. But it would seem something like that would be forever. Instead, a person was more likely to come regularly most of his life and never see a palm tree removed or added, but all held in a sort of trance. Unless something untoward occurs.

But this time something did happen. There was a violent lightning storm and one or more lightning strikes hit at least one palm tree. This is where the trees were vulnerable. Think of their broad dusty papery fronds and the dry grassy beards that drape down their trunks. One touch of the lightning and the tree is immediately aflame, then the nearby trees catch it. We had seen from our house smoke billowing up from the direction of the park, and we got in the news that night images of raging fires. The fire was quickly stopped but the damage was done. 

 

 Here is how it looked before the fire.

  

 

 The report from the park was that they would be closed for thirty days till they could clear up the mess and try to see which of the damaged trees could be kept alive. The frustration for us was that we couldn't see what parts had burned, and how damaged they were. Finally the thirty days was over (but they had made no move to open the gates). We drove over to the park and stopped at the closed gates, and peered through the closed fences to see if we could make out anything. Then we suddenly saw them, the horrible survivors. All that remained were the ten-or-fifteen-foot straight trunks covered with black soot, and on top of them the short bitten-off fronds, and we wondered how many would sprout out again,