Another season in the burn zone

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The clearing created by an old fire twenty years ago, whose half-burned logs somehow kept out the trembling aspen and most other colonizers, is nearly gone now. A 2012 brushfire ignited by an out-of-control bonfire mostly finished the job. I liked this clearing. We saw a lost pair of moose there once. And I used to photograph a colony of pixie cups and other slow-growing teeny-tiny lichens on a log halfway in. I also liked it because it was noticeably different than the forest that surrounded it.

I've been photographing the clearing as it recovers from the fire, so I can keep track of how it's changed.

Yesterday, it was full of tall grasses and aspen seedlings and cattails.