Outside USA – December 2021
English | 114 pages | pdf | 86.86 MB
This summer, a series of unprecedented megafires burned through California’s forests. Well, unprecedented isn’t entirely accurate; the world watched the state go up in flames in the summer of 2020, too. As I write this, California has already withstood 11 named wildfires in 2021, including the Dixie Fire, the Monument Fire, and the Calor Fire—enough to make us numb to the horrific imagery and steady, unfathomable cataloging of acres burned.
On October 4, however, my longtime friend and former Outside colleague Grayson Schaffer posted a series of photos on Instagram from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks that still managed to take my breath away. Schaffer was there, along with Outside contributing editor Kyle Dickman, to film the Arrowhead Hotshots, one of the crews tasked with trying to save some of the largest trees on the planet. Sequoias were once known for being adapted to fire and resistant to flames. Not anymore. “This is the new normal,” Schaffer explained, citing the effects of climate change we’ve been warned about for years. “Last night we witnessed a thousand-yearold sequoia torch from roots to canopy and then collapse a couple of hours later.” No matter where you stand on the issue of climate change, the planet is taking matters into its own hands— and in California, it’s not just forested regions bearing the brunt. This month, Paul Kvinta reports from the state’s southern coast to examine efforts to confront the inevitable sea-level rise (“Surf’s Up,” page 84). Geologists have long prescribed managed retreat—strategic abandonment of areas of coastline that are rapidly disappearing.
But as Kvinta discovers, what we need to do and what we are willing to do are too often very different things. In Encinitas, he chronicles a years long fight over a proposed relocation of a bluff-top parking lot and beach-access trail in order to mitigate the risk of a landslide. If we are unable to move a parking lot, one has to wonder at the scale of destruction we’ll need to endure before we act in our own best interests.
—CHRISTOPHER KEYES ( @KEYESER)
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