California has a complex and devastating relationship with fire. The words of LA-born songwriter Dave Alvin strike a chord with anyone who has lived here for even one summer “California’s burning, you can smell it in the air…You may be rich or poor but you know that fire don’t care.” Though many of our native ecosystems are dependent on the transformational effects of fire to thrive, poor land stewardship, drought and the effects of climate change have magnified these cycles from normal to national emergency levels. Year after year as the intensity of fire season escalates news cameras flock to document the leaping flames, the struggle of containment, and the immediate aftermath but rarely bear witness to the slow regrowth as paperwork is filed, construction begins, and green shoots begin to rise from the blacked earth. This blockprint series documents Figuroa Mountian’s slow recovery from the Lake Fire which burned 38,664 acres in late summer 2024. Figuroa resident and wilderness firefighter Levi kindly captured many images of the recovering landscape of his home for me to work from. Sentinels shows a grove of blackened manzanitas beginning to peel their damaged bark.