Book Review: The Cold Canyon Fire Journals: Green Shoots and Silver Linings in the Ashes, by Robin Lee Carlson

Robin Lee Carlson’s book is an up–close–and–very–personal study of fire’s relationship with Stebbins Cold Canyon ecosystems. Her familiarity with this canyon grew through many years of walking, observing, and sketching in the Reserve. She watched with sadness and grief as her familiar trails and forested canyons succumbed to wildfire. Her journey begins armed with her scientific background, creative and curious mind, while she devotedly recorded its recovery.

Robin is a GNSI member and serves on the Board of Directors and the Conference Oversight Committee. With a background in evolutionary biology, stream ecology, and translating science processes into understandable stories, Robin weaves the complex stories of devastation and reemergence with consideration about the future of fires and our current culture that must now embrace it. 

Her perseverance in numerous return trips, both day and night, revealed mysteries and answers to life within the canyon. With an observant eye and inquisitive mind, she records the first animals to return to the still–smoldering tree bark. She writes of newts who walk through fire, notes the undervalued wasps, and marvels at myriad animals and plants that adapt to cyclical fire. Even the world beneath the soil surface holds unseen secrets that aid the returning landscape.“I will always be profoundly glad that there is so much happening in the world right around us, above us, and under us that we will never know. This is perhaps the greatest beauty in the world—that we cannot know everything, and that every new discovery only reveals more mysteries.” (p. 190–192)

Curious behaviors of beetles, salamanders, birds, and plants emerge in her study and fascinated me throughout the book. I was fully engaged in the pathway of discovery she endured and embraced. With the diligence of a naturalist with a sketchbook, her pathway is revealed. This canyon became her laboratory and inspiration, walking, pausing, drawing, and carefully observing everything that caught her eye. The book is illustrated with her spontaneous and colorful illustrations. Direct and lively, they are as dynamic as her writing is engaging.

“I boggle at the thought of all the other adaptations to fire that we are unaware of and how rich the world must be to contain so many still–unseen wonders.” 

I want a signed copy of this book for my bookshelf to celebrate the power of observation and curiosity that opens our minds to Nature's mysteries, whether it is devastating or profound with marvels of the sustainability of biodiversity in our ever–changing environment. “We need diversity because it is only in diversity that we will find resilience.” “What my immersion in this process has taught me, though, is that the cycle of succession is not a targeted path with a final goal at the end. The so-called climax community of tall, mature trees and shrubs may feel like completion and the perfect end to the story, but every step along the way is the climax for a group of organisms.” (p. 212)

Publisher: Heyday
Paperback with Flaps, 7 x 9, over 100 full-color images, 288 pages. ISBN: 9781597145848

This open-access article appears in the Journal of Natural Science Illustrators, Volume 54, No.3., 2022.