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'Are we talking about the forest recovering to what it looked like before? Are we talking about recovering to conditions that will perhaps be better adapted or more resilient?'
The southern perimeter of the Horse Gulch Fire remains charred 10 weeks after the 15,000-acre burn. Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFP
On Sept. 15, dry pine needles littered the forest floor, forming a beige blanket over charred soil. Insect chatter echoed through the woods while a woodpecker pounded the trunk of a scorched Douglas fir, scattering chips of charcoal. In mid-July, when the Horse Gulch Fire burned at its most intense, firefighters cut a perimeter along the timberline's edge, just beneath a ridge's saddle. Now, a narrow lane of overturned soil, evidence of firefighting bulldozers, separated blackened earth from green grass. Verdant sprouts of assorted flora, none more than a foot tall, rose from the churned earth...
