For forty miles, I had looked forward to this view… No… Let me start again… I’d been looking forward to this view for over a year… In August 2021, on the second day of our road trip, Tadeh and I left the north rim of the Grand Canyon toward Monument Valley, stopping often as copses of aspen or wildflowers blooming in the roadside meadows caught our eyes. Then, there was the coffee stand, dispelling the memory of the morning brew I’d been subjected to at the lodge… Aspen groves had long been replaced by a fir and pine forest when we reached a shell-shocked landscape, one that still bore the scars of the Magnum fire that ravaged Kaibab National Forest in June 2020. In the year since the fire was extinguished, diminutive aspens had begun to fill the gaping holes in the charred landscape, looking very much out of place among the fingers of charcoal stretching toward the sky. As I drove away from the North Rim again, alone this time, I wondered how the aspen grove had fared. My stops were even longer, but alas the coffee stand had closed for the season… The scene that finally opened before me bore little resemblance to that of the past year… The aspen had grown, and coaxed by the cool winds of autumn stroking their leaves, had dressed themselves in the ephemeral yellows, oranges, and reds of fall. The contrast was even more stark. In the distance, a single row of pines had survived by sacrificing their lower limbs, looking a bit silly and top heavy as they marched along the horizon. Below them spread the ruins of the forest that the aspen, in their splendor, did their best to hide. Many of the charred trees had fallen, and many more would perhaps fall this winter as the snows set in. In another year or two, the fire would be a distant memory, though the forest would forever be changed by that conflagration.
