Aki never enters the burn. She always waits with a worried expression for me to finish my search for recovery. Until today, I found little to report. Today, the flashy blue of lupine blossoms draw more attention than the skeletons of burn trees. Young poplar trees rise in a scattered pattern between ruined spruce. In a decade shade from the fast growing poplar will force the lupine to the sunny margin that lines the trail. In 100 years the spruce will have pushed out the poplar. But today, the lupine thrive in ancestor ashes.