Aside from seeing several articles online about the loss of my beloved trees (*), I have a friend who lives in Wawona and his descriptions of what it was like to be there during the worst of the winds evoked that most extraordinarily rare of reactions from me: relief not to be in Yosemite (and I even enjoyed being there during the Rim Fire)! He had 4 very large trees (mostly incense cedars...one of them almost 4' in diameter) just barely miss his house (although they took out his deck, his fence and part of his driveway). I'm not sure if Wawona has power back yet (my friend said that the electric company was planning to bring in some mega-generators to sustain the area while they made repairs) but at least he has a small one to keep his house going in the meantime (although the trees also just barely missed his generator and his propane tank).
(*) I guess in some senses it's not really a "loss," just a realignment of their height into the horizontal dimension! Not really trying to minimize the scale of it...just saying that giant sequoias on their sides are also incredibly fascinating (and for most of us, it's as close as we'll ever get to seeing their crowns up close). I just wish the wind hadn't created quite so many "opportunities." The national press is only reporting on the losses in the Mariposa Grove...I wonder how the Tuolumne and Mercer groves road out the winds.
