Fountain Valley News - Your Hometown Community Newspaper

The trees were black. Soot covered them all the way to the top, and the branches were burned away. Set against the red-orange soil, they looked like a thousand black toothpicks that someone had poked into a mound of dirt. It was 2013, and I was standing in what had been the Flying W Ranch, now a section of the "Waldo Canyon burn scar." I was part of a high school community service group that was planting new trees in the burn scar.

First, we would dig a hole near an existing tree, which gave shelter. Then we would plant a tree sapling. Then we would add some gray gelatin (I think it's calle...