The sky is reflected in a Sierra Mountain lake behind wildflowers — the clean air, blue water and green land that citizens want without the fire that is required to maintain it in California's fire adapted ecology.

Hidden fires move slowly down a canyon as smoke settles in the cool, evening air at the Basin Complex Fire, near Carmel Valley, California.

A helicopter drops red fire retardant on the advancing fire to slow it while bulldozers finish fire breaks further down the canyon at the La Brea Fire, California.

A fire twister of spinning, burning gas rises from flaming chaparral at the La Brea Fire, as rising heat from the fire creates its own winds.

The demonic face and body in the flames is only a momentary flicker in a quick-moving fire, but such photographs have special appeal to many firefighters for whom the images may be warnings of real danger.

Turbulent 20-foot flames from burning chaparral bushes race uphill at nighttime controlled burn at the Station Fire near Los Angeles.

Embers from a backfire set by firefighters swarm across a fire break and threaten to spread the fire in the heavy winds during a night time controlled burn at the Station Fire, near Los Angeles. Weather is the least predictable of the factors that determine a wildfire, and a quick change in the wind can result in catastrophe — a reminder that wildfire is far more powerful than man.

Glowing smoke fills the sky and sparkling embers dot the hills as night settles on the La Brea Fire in the Los Padres National Forest, California.

Embers burn hot even after a helicopter water drop during the La Brea fire in the Los Padres National Forest in California. Chaparral burns hot and fast with 20 foot flame lengths, and a water drop can cool an area enough to allow firefighters on the ground to cut a fire line around fire to stop it.

Stiff skeletons of hot, burned bushes remain from a fire that jumped the fire break but was cooled with a helicopter water drop, then circled by ground crews before it could spread.

Minutes after firefighters at the Basin Complex Fire set a controlled fire to clear the fire break, all that remain of the brush are hot twigs and bare ground.

The native plants in the Los Padres National Forest are fire adapted, so long as the fire does not burn too hot. These round, pineapple-shaped yucca quickly sprouted new leaves only a few weeks after the La Brea Fire.

Yucca plants dotting the hillside are all the remain after a hot fire, burning through old-growth chaparral bushes and trees scorched the earth, what firefighters called "moonscaping". The intense heat makes the soil water resistant, leading to landslides, and reducing the amount of water the watershed can hold.

Sun-bleached manzanita bushes, burned by the 2001 Gap Fire in the mountains above Truckee, California.

A burned, dead tree rots above the fire-scorched remains of sun-bleached manzanita bushes at the site of the 2001 Gap Fire in the mountains above Truckee, California.