As California parents sign up their offspring for summer camp amid forecasts of another potentially catastrophic wildfire season, an existential question looms over the annual ritual: will camp still be standing come July?
The climate-driven megafires of recent years are threatening the future of summer camps, endangering a century-old tradition of spending school holidays in the pristine pine-scented air of the state’s lushly forested mountain ranges. Since 2013, wildfires in California have destroyed historic summer camps from Malibu to Tahoe. Urban camps, meanwhile, are adapting to a new climate of uncertainty as heat waves and toxic smoke from faraway fires upend their business.
“When there’s a fire. you’re looking at heat maps and wondering if this place you love is still there,” says Andy Moeschberger, director of Gold Arrow Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains south of Yosemite National Park
