Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007:
The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming
mountains onto the valley that's been her home since
kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near
homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to
evacuate three times. The trees were still smoldering, the air
still acrid when Deschenes, a slim high school senior with a
light-brown ponytail and a shy smile, first visited the
65,000-acre burn in California's northern Sierra Nevada. Shaken
by the sight of mountainside after bleak black mountainside, she
and a busload of classmates resolved to act. "What we really
wanted was to fill up a truck with pinecones to sprout and
replant," says Deschenes. Instead, the students transformed that
charred expanse into an outdoor laboratory, where young
researchers could help scientists and land managers understand
how forests recover from wildfires. It's part of a unique
natural resources program designed to connect students to th