Six Months Later: Life in the Aftermath of the Woolsey Fire

The Woolsey Fire swept through Malibu on November 9, 2018. This is Lower Corral Canyon on November 29, after the first post-fire rain. Although it looks as desolate as Mordor, the rainbow in the sky promises renewal.

It has been half a year since the Woolsey Fire. Many people are still in shock, struggling with loss, or with the loss experienced by loved ones. We are all still trying to process the magnitude of the disaster.

At the Malibu Post we were among the lucky ones who had a home to return to because our neighbors stayed and fought the fire, but it is still difficult. So many friends and neighbors lost their homes. So much was destroyed. Every day life was complicated by no electricity for weeks, no landline for months, road closures, flood warnings, dust and ashes every time the wind blew. 

As a journalist, I spent a lot of time in the middle of disaster zone reporting on the news. I spent even more time there in dreams each night, walking through that hellish landscape of incinerated trees and houses and ashy piles of bones (that's not an exaggeration, there were piles of bones all over the mountains after the fire). It was hard not to think about the fire all the time when everything was covered in ash, and even a short trip through the neighborhood was a drive through a war zone. Waking in the morning wasn't much better.  The view out the window revealed a blacked panorama of scorched mountains.

Corral Canyon, January 2, 2019.

Malibu may never be the same, but after nearly six months it is getting better. Recovery will be a long process, one that has only just begun. Debris is being cleared. Residents who lost their homes struggle with the lengthy, complex, and often frustrating process of rebuilding, but at least the process has begun, however difficult and labyrinthine. Nature is also undergoing a rebuilding process, one aided by the restorative rain this winter.

Corral Canyon, February 20, 2019.

Some neighbors may never return—their losses are too great to be overcome. Others are cautiously optimistic, the horror of the fire tempered by thoughts filled with plans for the future again. And everywhere the rain has helped soften the appearance of the burn scar with new growth. Wildflowers, even the non-native and ubiquitous mustard, have cloaked the damage with color and beauty. 

Corral Canyon, March 24, 2019.

I took more than 10,000 photos of the fire and its aftermath. It's still hard for me to look at some of them, but we are only six months into the recovery from what has been Los Angeles County's worst fire disaster. We've come a long way in the time. We still have a long hard road ahead of us, but all around us the natural environment has begun to heal. 

This tiny sprout is Chlorogalum pomeridianum, the soap plant or soap lily, spotted growing in upper Trancas Canyon on December 4. This was the first new growth I observed in the burn zone.

It is hard to imagine anything alive in this scorched and blasted landscape, but just weeks after the fire, new life was stirring here, too. the vast network of chaparral roots that remained in the soil help stabilize the hillsides and quickly jumpstart the recovery of many key plants. In undisturbed mountain soil there is also a bank of seeds that may have been produced decades earlier following previous fire. These are the fire followers, annual wildflowers with seeds that can remain dormant in the soil for years, but that sprout after the first rains following a fire. These plants will recharge the seed bank and provide food and shelter for surviving wildlife, but they also generate nutrients for a critically important network of micro and macro fungi that is essential for the survival of the chaparral plant community. Without this invisible web, recovery would be impossible.

Laurel sumac has deep, deep roots that help stabilize the mountainsides and provide a critical reserve of water and nutrients for this fire-adapted plant, enabling it to begin regrowth almost immediately after a wildfire. I spotted this first sprout at the location in the photo above on December 12, just a month after the fire.

Like the laurel sumac, wild cucumber—Marah macrocarpa, also called man root, has massive reserves of nutrients and water stored safely underground. It is one of the first plants to sprout after a fire, and its abundant white flowers are a blessing for native pollinators following a disaster like this one, where so many acres of habitat were incinerated.

This is the same lookout point above Zuma Canyon on May 1, 2019, re-greened and covered in phacelia grandiflora, one of the true fire-following wildflowers.

Fire following wildflowers that have appeared in the months after the wildfire include:

Larkspur—Delphinium parryi

Wind poppies—Papaver heterophyllum.

Fire poppy Papaver Californium (shown here with the tiny, strong-scented white flowers of eucrypta, another fire follower)

Globe lily—Calochortus albus.

Catalina mariposa lilies—Calochortus catalinae.

Phacelia grandiflora (shown here with a photo-bombing native pollinator).

Phacelia parryi.

Sticky phacelia—Phacelia viscida.

Caterpillar phacelia—Phacelia cicutaria, and one of the thoundreds and thousands of painted lady butterflies that have been another miracle of the cycle of fire, rain and regrowth this spring.

Fields of California poppies bloomed throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

...And entire hillsides of lupine, acres and acres of heavenly blue, growing out of the dust and ashes of the Woolsey Fire.

The post-fire superbloom that has covered the burned hills in a rainbow of living color may be mostly over, but the seeds set by these flowers will recharge the native wildflower seed bank in the soil. And there will be more fire-related wildflowers still to come: perennials that are growing now and will bloom next year, like bush poppy—Dendromecon rigida, and Trichostema lanatum—wooly blue curls, and late bloomers like Coulter's snapdragon and white bleeding hearts. The transformation has lifted human spirits in aftermath of this disaster. The flowers will fade, but they have been a blessing, a daily reminder of how far we have come in so short a time.

Here's a summary of the past six months from no farther away than our own home:

The view we see every morning out of our window includes a transmission tower on the ridge between Latigo and Corral canyons. Here's what that transmission tower looked like on the morning of November 9, 2019, and during the past six months:

November 9, 2019. Fire races up the mountain...

...And down the other side.

November 21, 2018. Gray and ashy as the surface of the moon.

December 12,  after the first rains. 

February 20, 2019.

March 20. Non-native mustard is growing where the soil has been disturbed, but on the slopes that are too steep for bulldozes and discing machines, native wildflowers like lupine thrive.

April 29, 2019. 

The view may never again look exactly like it did before—this is May of 2017, a year and half before the Woolsey fire, but also a decade after the earlier Corral Fire. Things are getting better, each day moves us farther away from the nightmare. 

Rebuilding after a wildfire is difficult. Recovery is slow. Many people are still experiencing grief and loss, or frustration and anger, but we are getting through it, together, one day at a time. For me, the dreams are less frequent now. When I look out of my window I still see one last sad chimney, but I also see green hills turning dusty gold as the rainy season ends. The familiar view of our much loved Malibu mountains isn't a wasteland anymore.

"...What I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again." —Norman MacLean, A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories

Lower Corral Canyon on the last day of April, 2019, almost six months after the Woolsey Fire.

Drawn from Life

I will be teaching a special new class called Creative Nature Journaling this summer at the Michael Landon Community Center at Malibu Bluffs Park. 

"To see a wren in a bush, call it "wren," and go on walking is to have (self-importantly) seen nothing. To see a bird and stop, watch, feel, forget yourself for a moment, be in the bushy shadows, maybe then feel "wren"— that is to have joined in a larger moment with the world." 

—Gary Snyder, Language Goes Two Ways, 1995.

I've kept a nature journal for many years, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to teach a course on creating one through the City of Malibu's community classes program.

I carry a small journal and some simple art supplies everywhere I go. This  sketch was done in the space of a few minutes between work events using a couple of water-soluable colored pencils and a Sharpie pen. 

Leonardo Da Vinci is regarded as the most celebrated nature journalist, recording his observations in painstaking detail and spectacular profusion. However, you don't need to be an artist or a scientist to keep a nature journal, although there are elements of art and science involved. All that is required is curiosity and the time to observe and experience nature. 

Delicate and detailed sketches of bird wings and feathers from the journals of Leonardo Da Vinci show the artist's meticulous attention to detail.

Well-known natural journalists include Lewis and Clark, John Wesley Powell, John Muir and Mary Austen all kept nature journals. So did Beatrix Potter and Edward Lear. 

A sketch from the journal of John Muir.

Edward Lear, best known for his nonsense poems, kept detailed journals of his travels that often featured drawing of plants and animals, especially birds. He  is justly famous for his scientifically accurate illustrations of parrots.

Edith Holden (1871-1920), made famous through the posthumous publication of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady in 1977, filled her journal with delicate watercolors simply for the joy of recording the seasons.

Edith Holden was a largely self-taught artist who kept a nature journal. It was published decades after her death and received much acclaim but was created as a private record of the artist's joy in nature, with no thought for posterity.

Writers Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez, and naturalist Bernd Heinrich are contemporary nature journal keepers, but all kinds of people keep a nature journal.

Biologist, bird behaviorist, and nature journalist Bernd Heinrich takes what he calls a "hands-and-knees" approach to observing nature. 

A Google image search will turn up an amazing range from the drawings of grade school children to pages that resemble the jewel-like illuminations in a medieval manuscript. The one thing they share in common is an interest in the natural world.

Here in Malibu, the natural world is never more than a few steps away. Most of us see—or hear—mourning doves every day in the spring. Adding a sketch of one to the journal is an opportunity to really look at this bird, observe its colors, shape, habits. I find that drawing fixes the subject in the mind in a way that observation or even photography cannot match.

In her book Keeping a Nature Journal, author Clare Walker Leslie describes the difference between a nature journal and a personal journal like this: "a diary or personal journal records your feelings toward yourself and others, a nature journal primarily records your responses to and reflections about the world of nature around you.”

Capturing a fast-moving sea lion is half observation and half drawing on memory. It doesn't matter if the sketches in a nature journal are detailed or rough, as long as the memory is fixed, the observation recorded, that's all that matters. 

In the class, we'll use watercolors and pencil to chronicle  some of the plants, animals, and landscapes at Bluffs Park. We'll also explore the art of observation—sharping the ability to describe what we see. I think it will be fun and useful, whether you are new to nature journaling or have kept a journal for years.

My journal, especially in springtime, is full of birds, but almost anything can be the subject for a nature journal. Poetry can evolve out of written descriptions. Some journal-keepers press objects like leaves or flowers between the pages. Sketches might range from stick figures dashed off with a ballpoint pen to intricate pen and ink drawings. Watercolors might be used to match the exact colors in a leaf or feather, or in loose, abstract washes that attempt to capture the colors of the sky or the rush of birds in flight.

The Creative Nature Journaling class is offered in two four-week sessions on Wednesdays, 10 am-noon. The first session is June 15 to July 6; the second, July 13-August 3. There is an $80 fee per session, and a $25 material fee that includes all of the necessary art supplies. I would be delighted, dear reader, if you would join us. More information, including the registration form, is available on the City of Malibu's Parks and Recreation website, here.

Socially Eminent Rabbits

Here is the mild-mannered monarch of our Point Dume garden, Sylvilagus audubonii. Audubon's cottontail rabbit, more commonly known as the desert cottontail, is a small package with a lot of personality and determination. All photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

A Rabbit Parable 

In Wildwood, a socially eminent Rabbit,
Of dignity, substance and girth,
Had chosen a suitable hole to inhabit–
An excellent burrow of earth.

When up came a Woodchuck, a genuine Groundhog,
Who wanted the place for his lair;
The Rabbit, impressed by a seventeen-pound Hog,
Abruptly departed from there.

But shortly thereafter a virtuous Badger
Slid down from the neighbouring shelf;
The Woodchuck he slew as a robber and a cadger,
Bequeathing the hole to himself.

 A Fox who believed in the law of requital
Appeared through the bordering fern;
He questioned the Badger’s Manorial title
Demanding the burrow in turn.

A battle ensued in a terrible smother,
Affrighting the hardiest soul;
The Fox and the Badger abolished each other,
The Rabbit returned to his hole.

So here is appended the mildest of morals,
Accept it for what it is worth:
“When all the Haughty are killed in their quarrels
The Meek shall inherit the earth.”

—Arthur Guiterman


We are blessed with a wide variety of four-footed wildlife on Point Dume. Coyotes, gray foxes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, long-tailed weasels and an assortment of native rodents live here, largely unseen by humans, but the cottontail rabbits seem like neighbors, they live alongside us, as well as in that separate, unseen world that just happens to occupy the same space as the one we inhabit. 

When I needed a photo for the top of the page I knew just where to find the front yard rabbit this evening. She's lived here for years and has no fear of the resident humans or the family dog. However the shadow of a hawk passing overhead or an unfamiliar sound will send her instantly into hiding. It's a tough life at the bottom of the food chain, and any rabbit who lives to be old and wise knows not to take chances. 

The front yard rabbit performs her disappearing act, vanishing instantly when she hears an unfamiliar sound, in this case, the click of my camera. 

Rabbits are on the menu of every native predator and are also the frequent victims of domestic animal attacks, poison, and vehicle strikes—the zigzagging dash at speeds up to 20 mph they've evolved to evade hunters doesn't help them to avoid cars. Every second may be their last, but despite their precarious existence, or perhaps because of it, they give the impression of enjoying life to the fullest. They lounge in the sun like contented house cats and nibble the flowers with evident enthusiasm. They don't dig burrows or form colonies like other rabbit species, but they seem to enjoy each other's company and often congregate in small groups (flocks? herds? pods?) of three or four.  

The front yard rabbit lounges in a sheltered spot, looking for all the world like a contented cat. 

Cottontail courtship involves a cross between tag and country dancing, with elaborate leaps and figure eight patterns. Occasionally, an importuned rabbit becomes annoyed and boxes the aggressor rabbit's ears, but on the whole, rabbit society is remarkably easy-going. 

There are two types of cottontail rabbits in the Santa Monica Mountains, S. audubonii and S. bachmani. S. Audubonii is the more common species. S. bachmani, the brush cottontail, is smaller, shyer, wilder. Brush cottontails stick to the chaparral. Desert cottontails have adapted to urban life and are found wherever there is enough food and shelter. This can be a problem, since the rabbit's idea of dinner includes just about everything humans like to grow for food and many ornamental plant species. 

Desert cottontails have remarkably good climbing skills and have been know to climb up stairs, onto decks, and even into pots to gain access to tender, tasty flowers and vegetables. The best way to prevent misunderstandings is to fence off anything that is off limits. Although we don't always follow our own advice here at The Malibu Post, leading to scenes like this:

"Oh look, a salad bar!"

"Nom nom, nom."

Around here, everyone agrees that the pleasure of having rabbits in the garden is greater than any rabbit-related aggravations, but there was a time when one of the neighbors did mind and poisoned everything in sight. There were no rabbits for many years. It was a reminder that humans recognize property lines but wildlife does not, and that poison can spread to a much wider area than the poison user may realize.

Not long after that individual departed, the rabbits began to return. We see them almost every morning and every evening all year long, eating, resting, playing, dozing in the sun. They may be small and defenseless and meek, but they love life and live it with joy.

Happy Easter!

Suzanne Guldimann
20 April 2014

The front yard rabbit dances by the light of the moon. 

The There That's Here

A panorama of the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains, photographed from above King Gillette Ranch, looking towards Malibu. Last week, the California Coastal Commission approved a land use plan intended to keep the mountains looking like this in perpetuity. Photo © S. Guldimann

Not that long ago, a member of the Malibu City Council stated that some people say that the Malibu Civic Center needs to be developed into a destination for visitors because "there is no there there." Somehow, that doesn't deter the millions of people who come to Malibu each year not for the shopping but for the mountains and the sea. It helps to remember that Malibu is located within a National Park, one that is just as valid as Yosemite or Acadia, for all that it is on the edge of the largest urban landscape in the country.

Developers have always seen the mountains as an opportunity for profit, but the area has been blessed by passionate defenders as well, who have worked for more than a hundred years to protect and preserve this unique mountain range and the Mediterranean ecosystem it encompasses. This week, conservation activists are celebrating what is being hailed as a major victory for the mountains. The California Coastal Commission approval of a Local Coastal Program for the 80-square-mile portion of the mountains that are in unincorporated Los Angeles County.

On his blog, L.A. County 3rd District Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has championed the land use plan from the beginning, wrote:

In a vote that will resonate for generations, the California Coastal Commission this week cleared the way for the enactment of a wide-ranging plan to protect the Santa Monica Mountains from development that already has scarred portions of one of the region’s most important environmental and recreational resources.

The 12-member commission voted unanimously in favor of a land use plan adopted last month by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, despite strong opposition from real estate development interests. The Coastal Commission vote was mandated by state law and represents a milestone in the years-long effort to preserve the mountains along the coast as a rural escape for tens of thousands of visitors each year.

The plan will, among many other things, ban ridgeline development, save oaks and other native woodlands, outlaw poisons that can harm wildlife, protect water sources, restrict lighting to preserve the night sky and prevent the opening of new vineyards, which take a toll on the land and water.

It's also a validation of the work of generations of activists who worked against the odds to preserve and protect something they recognized as rare and exceptional. 

Here's the poster child for bad planning in the Santa  Monica Mountains. Almost everything about this Kanan Dume Road mega-mansion/vineyard estate would be banned under the new Santa Monica Mountains coastal plan: the vineyards, the ridgeline house site, the mile-long "mansion driveway," and the acres of scorched earth habitat destruction. This glorified spec house probably did more than another other site to raise awareness about the potential negative impact of vineyards in the mountains—you can see those tidy, geometric rows of vines from vantage points all over the mountains. That's Saddle Peak in the foreground—an important Chumash cultural site that used to be the most conspicuous landmark in the area. 

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was created by an Act of Congress in 1978, but the effort to conserve at least part of the mountains and the coast as a park began much earlier. Although it's largely forgotten now, the first advocate for a Santa Monica Mountains park was Frederick Hastings Rindge, who purchased the entire Topanga Malibu Sequit Rancho in 1891. He had plans for development in Malibu but also envisioned parkland. In his book Happy Days in Southern California he expresses the desire to preserve at least part of western Malibu as a park:

It seems best to keep Zuma as a park, and to tell the axe and plough to keep off the sycamore and alfilaria. So you can come, kind reader, and see it as it is, at your convenience. Zuma! to be in thy presence makes one happy ; it makes one feel like singing — nay, it makes one sing: 

God grant that peace may ever be
 In Zumaland beside the sea.

As early as 1902, there were government plans to create a preserve. A formal proposal for a 70,000-acre park was submitted to Washington in 1907. The plan was derailed by an influential developer.

The Olmsted Report, issued by park proponent Frederick Law Olmsted in 1930, recommended a 10,000-acre chain of parks throughout Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. Sylvia Morrison, an even earlier activist, proposed that a section of the mountains in Pacific Palisades slated to become a cement quarry should be preserved as "Whitestone National Park."

The 1930 Olmsted Report recommended a 10,000-acre "belt park" encompassing the City of Los Angeles. What are now Zuma County Beach and Zuma Canyon Park were part of the plan, which was swiftly torpedoed by (surprise!) development interests.

Activists in the 1960s campaigned for the creation of Toyon National Park. They didn't succeed—Congress turned down the proposal in 1971, but the state of California acquired 6700 acres of the old Broome Ranch in 1967. The Danielson Ranch—an additional 5700 acres—was added in 1972, creating Point Mugu State Park. Topanga, Leo Carrillo, and Malibu Creek state parks came next. Conservation advocates Sue Nelson, Jill Swift, and Malibuite Margo Feuer led the charge for the park in the 1970s. There efforts led to the creation of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 1978.

Today the SMMNRA encompasses 156,670 acres. Slightly more than half of the total acreage is parkland and the percentage is growing. Instead of a portion of the old Malibu Rancho being set aside for a park, the entire City of Malibu is technically within the boundaries of the park.

However, until Rindge's widow May Knight Rindge, lost her battle with the county over the coastal route right-of-way and the gates of the rancho were opened to the public in 1929, Malibu was as remote and unattainable as the moon.

In those days, the Las Flores Inn—located where Duke's Restaurant is now—was the end of the road for day-trippers. It was an adventure for early motorists to take the precarious coast route to the inn for fish dinners and ice cream. When Topanga and Las Flores Canyon roads were constructed, they offered access to an unimaginable wilderness for adventurous Angelenos.

The Las Flores Inn was as close to Malibu as the public could get in 1915. It was an adventure to motor out for ice cream and a glimpse of the fabled Malibu beaches just out of reach beyond the Rancho gates. 

The Topanga and Las Flores Canyon Stage Coach Co. advertised "Southern California's Prettiest Drive." Coaches left from Santa Monica opposite the P. E. Railroad. According to the comprehensive history of the Topanga area published by the Topanga Historical Society and entitled  The Topanga Story, a pamphlet issued in 1925 by coach promoter Francis Burnett boasted that a trip to Topanga Canyon "will improve poor appetite, get rid of colds in the bracing atmosphere, relax the nerves and provide a sure cure for the 'blues.'""Visit Mohn Springs," another brochure from the 1920s invites. "Drink from the famous mineral springs. The Most Beneficial Water Known."

Campgrounds, cabins, lodges and even spas and baths touting curative mineral water sprang up all over the area.

Here's an image from the Water and Power Associates web archive showing outdoors enthusiasts camping in Santa Monica Canyon as early as 1880.

 A pre-Roosevelt Highway 1920s postcard from "Cooper's Camp Tent City" shows tent cabins and bungalows at Topanga Beach. This stretch of the coast route was paved by the City of Santa Monica in 1916, and was known as the Palisades Beach Road. The image is from the LMU Digital Archive.

In some cases, homesteaders took advantage of the new craze for outdoor activities and transformed existing farms into mountain health resorts. There were plenty of real estate investment schemes, too. An ad for the "Malibu Mar Vista" development boasts, "In development of Malibu Mar Vista we have not followed the usual mountain subdivision plan of selling small lots. Such commercialism always results in congestion and the destruction of the desired privacy. Our average lots are one-quarter of an acre. Roads are built and water installed."

Roads and water. Makes you wonder what the other mountain subdivision plans were like, and it underscores the reason why the mountains aren't entirely carpeted with quarter-acre lots—the terrain, even today, is difficult to access and prone to the same violent geological forces that shaped the mountains in the first place. There's a Malibu Mar Vista Drive off Latigo Canyon Road,  the last reminder of this particular endeavor.

The authors of the Malibu Mar Vista brochure seem to have been holders of a creative license. No. 3 states "Roosevelt Highway looking towards Santa Monica from Malibu Mar Vista. It fails to mention that the tract is miles up a winding mountain road, not on the beach. looks more like the Malibu Colony area. No. 6 is "Malibu Lake and Clubhouse," which is equally far away in the other direction, and number 4 is "the picturesque road from Ventura Blvd to Malibu Mar Vista. "Road" being an insanely optimistic definition for the largely unpaved track from the San Fernando Valley. The men with the lawnmower-sized tractor in no. 2 are allegedly grading Latigo Canyon.

Here's a close-up of another page in the brochure, featuring flappers picnicking and frolicking in the surf. The prose may be purple, but it sums up the enduring romance of the mountains. A "wonderfully interesting drive" isn't hyperbole. Like almost all of the local mountain roads, Latigo is still wonderfully interesting.

Visitors are still arriving in the mountains in search of something wonderful. Advocates for the County's new LCP hope that it will ensure that future generations continue to find the beauty that drew earlier visitors, but all of the main roads into the Santa Monica Mountains begin—or end—on Pacific Coast Highway, in Malibu. Thanks to the efforts of generations of conservationists, there's still plenty of wonderful, interesting and beautiful things to see and do. And just like the old ad says, there's seclusion and privacy and freedom. But it's up to us to ensure that Malibu also continues to protect the things that make it unique. Perhaps those who think there isn't a there here haven't taken time to look around and understand that what people come to Malibu to find is already here, and not there, or anywhere else on earth.

Suzanne Guldimann
14 April 2014