This week, it will have been six months since the Woolsey Fire scorched tens of thousands of acres of hills and homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
While the Woolsey Fire was much less deadly than the Camp Fire — the explosive blaze that killed 86 people and left the town of Paradise almost completely in ashes — it was still among California’s most damaging.
For residents of Thousand Oaks, the blaze was especially devastating; some were forced to evacuate just hours after surviving the horrific shooting at the Border Line Bar & Grill.
And the Woolsey Fire tore through some of the region’s beloved outdoor areas, leaving behind charred hiking trails and scorching Old West film sets, a 155-year-old mission station and Jewish summer camps in the Santa Monica Mountains.
But a rainy winter, for all its implications about our changing climate, means that the barren earth didn’t stay that way for long.
Kevin Shea Adams, a photographer based in Los Angeles, told me he stumbled upon the land in a striking transitional state earlier this year, hiking in Malibu Creek State Park.
“Las Virgenes Road is a road I’ve taken many times to go surfing in Malibu, and I hadn’t ever actually explored the Santa Monicas very much,” he said. “As soon as I got there, I was kind of blown away by the landscape.”
That bright green carpet of new growth created an almost abstract visual contrast with the blackened hills.
So Adams said he returned with progressively longer camera lenses over several weekends starting in March to capture a rare scene.
“It’s amazing how quickly that landscape sort of rebounded — how resilient it was,” he said. “It was kind of a nice palate cleanser in a way.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.