east of Sacramento under very tall, old-growth trees. She says she's philosophical, and has a second home down in the valley close to where she worked, but her "forever" home has always been there in the mountains.
The Yosemite picture is grim, but maybe they'll stop it before it reaches the nearest old grove. She was a married woman when I occasionally went to stay with her and her husband in El Portal below Yosemite and attended the old 3-room school terraced up on the side of a mountain with spectacular playground views up the river ravine toward Yosemite. Every Wednesday in winter the school closed and the Curry Company concessionaire sent a bus to take the entire student body up to the ski slopes. Very "those were the old days."
I read that an El Portal trailer park evacuation has been lifted. The only one I remember was along the Merced River, where ferocious spring rapids threatened to sweep away any child who slipped a foot in.
In L.A., where we once lived between two mountain ranges near Pasadena, there were fires in nearby mountains and canyons most years, but I felt safe because any fire sweeping down would have to burn a few hundred houses before getting to ours and none burned far into the edges before being stopped. No more, and our friends there are also feeling the stress as fires not reported in the national media move dangerously close to someone we know every year now.
A very necessary adjustment, of course, is to stop building homes in very vulnerable places where they should never have been allowed in the first place. As a real estate appraiser I saw so many. Whole new subdivisions built along cleared ridges that would be extremely difficult to defend, even while others burned.
Best wishes to your family and friends.
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