The State of Fire: Why California Burns Talk

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network presents

The State of Fire; Why California Burns

Talk & Book Signing

with Award Winning  Author Obi Kaufmann

Thursday, February 20, 6:30–8:30pm, 2025, FREE

Location:  Fe Bland Auditorium/BC Forum

SBCC West Campus, 800 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109

Joined by a panel of Community Members &

special guest:

Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, Melinda Palacio

 

“The past, present, and future of fire are key in understanding  humanity’s power to upend the world”, Obi Kaufmann

 

Please join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network on Thursday, February 20, for a special evening with naturalist, illustrator, and award winning author Obi Kaufmann, sharing his timely book The State of Fire, Why California Burns.

From the creator of The California Field Atlas, Obi Kaufmann shares a book of stewardship, resilience, and hope.  Fire is an essential part of California’s ecology and humans have been using it to shape the California landscape for thousands of years.  But today many Californians’ relationship to fire is primarily one of fear.

 

Obi Kaufmann now asks: How do we live with fire?  What makes fire essential to a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and how do we benefit from its teachings?

 

With the same solution-minded ethic as his earlier book The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource, Kaufmann presents fire as a force of regeneration rather than apocalypse. He considers the long history of ecological burns, the varied ways fire behaves across the state, and the lessons we can learn from California’s largest fires of recent decades.

 

Packed with Kaufmann’s signature watercolor maps and paintings, The State of Fire confronts one of California’s most pressing social and ecological challenges.  From the maelstrom and devastation fire often presents to humans and their communities, Kaufmann emerges to share a deepened love for the natural world—and a refreshingly hopeful vision of California’s future.

 

Born in California, Obi Kaufmann is an award-winning author and illustrator of best-selling books on California’s ecology, biodiversity, and geography.  Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems in all of his books.  Kaufmann’s earlier books, The State of Water and The California Lands Trilogy present a comprehensive survey of California’s evolutionary past and its unfolding future.   A former student at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) connecting him to our region in earlier times, Obi Kaufmann now makes his home in Oakland, CA,  where he continues to work on future Field Atlases, and posts his essays on coyoteandthunder.com.

The free event takes place at the Fe Bland Auditorium/BC Forum on the Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) West Campus on Thursday, February 20,  6:30–8:30 pm. For more information, www.sbpermaculture.org,  margie@sbpermaculture.org, 805-962-257.

Community Panel Members include:

Ray Ford, Santa Barbara County backcountry author, photographer & journalist;  Betty Seaman, Natural Builder, Spirit Pine;  Cooper Lienhart, Nature’s Design & SLO Beaver Brigade;

Em Johnson Community Environmental Council (CEC) Director of Climate Programs