They still stand en masse: black-and-white sentries, a murder of scarecrows on the mountainsides. They are the dead trees, thousands of them, scarred, twisted, and scorched, still stretching out branches that will never blossom, still held fast in the earth by roots that will never drink.

They have stood for the last five years over the peaks of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The name is an evolution of what the Indians used to call this high pine forest – COY YA MAHK AH: “the place where it rains.” Just three hours’ drive from Los Angeles, wedged in the Peninsular Range between the coastal splendor of San Diego to the west, and the sprawling desert of Anza-Borrego to the east, in dry Southern California this has traditionally been a place to renew, to return to and refresh.

Traces of human residence can be tracked back 7,000 years. Gold rushers came here in 1869 and mined. North of the Park land the town of Julian sprung up, survived the closing of the mine, and local stores and restaurants for miles around advertise cider and pies made from “Julian apples,” when in season.

In 2003, it looked like all that history could be wiped away in one merciless week. The Cedar Fire of October started small, a signal fire set by a lost hunter. But an overnight shift in the notorious autumn Santa Ana winds sent it rampaging across 30 miles of terrain in a matter of hours, consuming buildings and whole small communities with little, if any, warning. Contemporary news reports talk of urgent requests for Californians to curb water use to keep hose pressure up for the more than 8,000 firefighters, and refugees gathered at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, forcing an NFL game to relocate to Arizona on a day’s notice.

It took nine days to contain the fire, which consumed over 280,000 acres and 2,800 buildings. Fifteen people, including one firefighter, died in what was the largest single fire in the recorded history of California to that point. Of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park’s 26,000 acres, 25,000 burned.

That was five years ago. But a year to the earth is just a heartbeat in a very long life, and in five it has already healed enough that the Park’s volunteer Interpretive Association aggressively promoted the Park’s hiking trails this year, inviting campers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders to come back to Cuyamaca, and witness the renewal.

I pitch my tent at the Paso Picacho campground at 5,000-feet elevation. It’s sparsely attended now that the temperature is dropping. The famous variety of wildflowers is mostly gone this time of year, and the Santa Anas roar through at night like oncoming traffic. But during the day I hike the trails, and the vistas are still wide, still breathtaking. And the green is coming back.

Nedra Martinez is the Montane Sector Superintendent for this and Palomar Mountain State Parks. She says that even in devastating forest fires, there are usually enough islands of surviving trees that forest re-growth can start itself. But the Cedar Fire burned so hot, and so fast, it didn’t leave those islands behind. The Park has initiated a re-forestation program, planting pockets of Jeffrey Pine seedlings to kick-start the process.

The meadows recovered quickly, within the first year or two. But the forest is not yet its old self, and won’t be for some time. Ceanothus is running wild right now. This shrub does better without the shade of the tall pines, so it is not part of Nature’s long-term plan, but today it plays a vital role; it re-enriches the soil with nitrogen, and its protein-rich leaves are good food for deer, drawing them back into the habitat.

Five years removed from the fire, Martinez says, “The seedlings on the mountain top are at waist height now. In a few years they’ll be the new big trees. They’ll shed cones, and the cones will roll down the mountain.”

I imagine that image at generational speed: fresh cones sprouting yet more trees from the peak, a spreading carpet of new forest that follows the streams of water already finding their way down. In 20-30 years, Martinez says, there will be little sign left of the wound but the last of those dead trees, scarred memorials amidst restored life.

“We’re so impatient,” she smiles.

Human affairs did not wait so long. At Lake Cuyamaca, just north of the Park, Georgia Martin remembers local businesses bringing in generators and getting back to work even as firefighters were just containing the blaze. She’s the Office Manager for the Lake’s Recreation and Park District, and deals with the fishermen who come through year-round, seeking trout, bass, catfish, bluegill, and sturgeon. Even as she shows me an overhead photo of the lake in 2003, made gray by ash, she remembers the good fortune in the midst of tragedy – the lake was not polluted enough to trigger a fish kill. The fishermen came back all but immediately, and business has not slacked since. “Fishermen are fishermen,” she cracks, “you don’t really stop them from doing what they do. They’re like golfers.”

She’s been here long enough to witness this cycle once before – she remembers the Laguna Fire of 1970, the one the Cedar Fire replaced in the record books for acres destroyed. The power of the Santa Ana winds can both harm and heal. “The east wind came down and blew out that fire,” she says, sweeping her arms as she remembers it. She wishes that the State Park had initiated re-forestation efforts sooner, but overall she is content to see to her business, and trust that nature will see to its’.

What I sense up here is not a thriving but a stirring, twitches of life – new apples on the ground, lizards smaller than your pinkie skittering from shelter to shelter, a rafter of wild turkeys trundling through the campsite on a leisurely forage. The ground is pushing up berries, and the water is flowing. A young pair of mule deer, spotting me as I plod along the trail, prances up a hill and into the brush.

I hear a pecking sound from a living tree by my tent. Circling the tree, seeing nothing, finally I rap my fist lightly on the trunk, as if answering. And immediately a plump, peach-breasted bird pokes his head out of a notch in the wood, head darting about. It leaves its hollow and flaps up to the highest branch, fluffing its feathers out in irritation as it scans the horizon for the intruder. I understand the message – important work is happening here.

This is just the story five heartbeats away. The healing will carry on for many more.

I am excited to come back in the spring. There will be more flowers then.