Two months ago, Napa County’s Cleary Reserve was a cathedral of green. Oak branches arched over the entry road. Salamanders flickered in the brush, and a century-old lodge stood ready for students. At its heart lay a rare redwood grove — the most inland natural stand in California — where waterfalls spilled through its shaded canyon.

Now, it’s a graveyard.

Ninety percent of the nearly 500-acre nonprofit preserve in Aetna Springs has been reduced to ash by the Pickett Fire, leaving blackened tree skeletons and stone ruins where generations of students once learned. • Biologist Jeff Alvarez displays a photograph of a historical cabin at the Cleary Reserve which burned during the Pickett Fire in Aug., Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat) • A singed pine tree and

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