There was a brush fire today in the Torrey Pines SNR Extension!
The area's indispensable photographer Herb Knufken posted a photo as it was just starting - taken from across the lagoon, in Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve itself. After many hours, the work of 150 firefighters, many water-dumping aircraft and some evacuations, 23 acres were burned, including trails we hiked just half a year ago. 
Following the fire in real time, not from across the lagoon but from across the continent, brought back scarred memories of the Witch Fire in October 2007, a much bigger conflagration which seemed, until the fierce winds changed direction, likely to destroy the whole town in which I grew up. And more recent memories, too, like the path through a kind of tree-tunnel which we walked just last December...
