Everyone's Back!

 Finally they had given us permission to return to Agua Caliente Park after the fire.

 We all began arriving at the parking area early and as soon as we got out of our cars realized other people were not moving down into the park, but had already seen friends they had not seen for weeks, or in some cases months, and we were gathering right there, standing and talking, or grabbing any tables and benches handy. Cheryl and I don't have a dog (what would they say if they knew we had a cat!) but virtually everyone else does, and the dogs are as much our friends as our human friends are, and they are literally bowling us over as we are trying to talk to their owners. All our friends are okay, so next after the gossip is past what we all want to see is what shape the park is in.

Well, we had already had a glimpse as we came in on the approach road, and at first it seemed stark and dramatic, but as days passed on and we got more used to it, it was just sad. The palm trees had been the park's glory (the date palms had been planted a hundred years ago), but now they rattled in their desiccation, tall scorched-black trunks with nothing on their tops but the broken off scraps of their fronds.

 In its natural vegetation the area surrounding the park is called a called a mesquite bosque. For instance in the unaltered patches around the oasis you can see the recognizable shapes of the mesquites leaning in towards you from the horizon. We never saw any sign that the lightning had struck or in anyway damaged the mesquites so they didn't seem to be attractive to the electricity, but the palms  were clustered in the center of the oasis and with their weak carton-like structure, the high flames whipped straight through them, and immediately caught the next palm, and the next.

Here, in a different stand across the lake is what the burned palms looked like before the fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 Here is what whole stands look like now. Some of these might recover, but it looks doubtful for others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, the park might be more enduring than we believe, more able to rebuild itself.  In 2017 (I'm reading a useful history) it was nearly destroyed by a severe microburst which left trees and palms, trn and tattered, the palm fronds ripped apart and littering the ground. The park was cleaned up then; it will be again.