Living on the Edge

The Tall Trees of Cobb Mountain

Forests are magical. A whole forest spreads and slows the wind. No one tree takes the brunt of the force, the edges of a forest in normal times have shorter trees, gradually as you go deeper, the trees grow taller, reaching for the sun.

Cobb Mountain in Lake County, CA, once stood amidst a massive old growth forest. In ancient times, fire swept through there on regular intervals, as it did in all of the forests of pre-modern California.  In the 1940s and 1950s, people built homes and cabins there, seeing it as idyllic, magical place. This initiated an era of forest fire suppression. 

Only now are we beginning to understand the consequences. 

In September of 2015, the catastrophic Valley Fire swept through the area, destroying most of the homes and forest in communities of Cobb, Middletown, Whispering Pines, Anderson Springs and parts of Middletown and Hidden Valley Lake. Some homes and trees survived the fire. The people living in these homes felt lucky.

But, tall trees that once thrived in the heart of the forest now found themselves on its periphery. These trees belong in the middle of a forest--the bulk of their foliage growing near the top, with their long lower trunks bare. Many conifers are shallow-rooted so these trees even more vulnerable to extreme weather. With climate change, we experience increased severity of drought and rain, depending on the year.   

In Winter 2023-24, nine years after the Valley fire, heavy storms buffeted the mountain. The first of these storms brought fifty mile per hour wind gusts in what meteorologists called an "atmospheric river" (apparently the new name for heavy rains).  The tall trees of Cobb stood as sentinels, holding fast as the soil around them softened.  

A subsequent storm brought even more intense conditions. With no forest to slow the winds, they gathered strength and force in the scar of the Valley fire, racing though Middleton Valley and up Cobb mountain. Gusts reached ninety miles per hour.

I’m a mechanical engineer. Any engineer will tell you that the longer the lever, the less effort or energy it takes to move a mass--like a boulder. Or soil surrounding the rootball of a tree.

Tall trees are like giant levers.  When the wind hits the tree, its force is borne by the most surface area--in this case, the top foliage. For  awhile, the roots hold, then one at a time the trees let go, the weakest first, then even the strong.  Gale force winds howled as many of the tall trees of Cobb Mountain crashed to the ground

The storm passed. On a calm day a week later, one can hardly imagine what the night must have been like for the people who stayed, huddled in their cabins.  Some left at the first crash of tree on tree. Some waited until they could no longer bear it, and then they too, raced off the mountain in the treacherous winds. Some were trapped after trees fell across the road. No power. No Internet.  Only darkness. Surrounded by broken limbs and crushed cars, mangled decks.  On this calm day, such disruption seems surreal. 

In the past, amidst old growth forest, trees fell occasionally, providing new life to the understory and habitat for wildlife. It was a good thing. 

But in these storms trees fell in large numbers. They fell on cars, decks, roof lines, and even into someone’s living room, splitting their home in two.  When the skies cleared, the residents of the new forest edge were left to pick up their lives. Those living nearby realize that the forest edge was migrating toward their homes too. It was only a matter of time before the edge reached them.

One consequence is that tree lovers have come to fear trees. They look to the tops of those trees wondering which one will fall next? Is this tree above my home weak? Will it fall in the next storm?  Will my home be crushed next? They wonder: should we remove these trees?  

Yes, many more trees will fall in the increasingly powerful storms. The tiny cabin in the idyllic forest, became the forest's undoing. Now, either the cabins will be taken, or the trees. Or both.

This is the consequence when we don’t understand the land what it needs and wants and allows. If we live in the forest either we accept the natural processes of fire and old trees falling, or we must mimic those processes for the forest to thrive. Otherwise, our stay there is temporary or we take the forest down to save our homes.

I keep thinking of how those trees they were once surrounded by community of trees, and now they stand alone. Wind will take them down one at a time. Or people will.

But it started with the cabins of the 1940s and 50s.

The forest now struggles to return. As it does, this is a time of extreme vulnerability.  Trees who were once in the middle, once surrounded by a whole community of trees, are now on the edge.  As storms intensify they have no support. They topple and the forest withdraws even further from the burn scar. 

Perhaps downed trees will form habitat for what needs to grow on that new edge. Maybe in time, young trees might grow tall enough to help reestablish a true forest edge, if we give it time. 

One lesson here is this: no one, not even the strongest among us, can face such intense energies alone. We need each other. We need the young trees, and the middle-age trees, to share the forest, especially if we live in these newly vulnerable places.  

Even the strong can’t hold on against such force forever.

I understand the draw of living in such a beautiful place, and I don’t subscribe to the idea of living in fear, but let's acknowledge one thing: we did this. We built cabins in the forest we stopped the natural processes by our very presence. 

Why are we so surprised to see the forest fall?

We, the seventh generation of those European-Americans, who first encountered the beauty and fecundity of this place, live in an era of consequences. These settlers brought their horses and cannons and guns, then their mills and plows, and their descendants built homes in sacred places.   

Once upon a time, natural fires and indigenous people managed those forested lands. Life was a dance with the land.  We face the consequences of not understanding this. We suffer the result of the settlers misjudgment, and their misunderstanding of how forests work.  A hard lesson in humility. 

Nature's power is on full display on these edges, a power both terrible and beautiful. So consequences are here: ones that we personally did not imagine and a result of acts that we personally did not initiate. Yet here we are, all of us, living on the forest edge. 

Short term solutions elude us.  Take down the trees that might fall? Move that forest edge even further? We might as well take down the whole forest.  

I know this: tall trees need a forest--a whole community to stand strong.