Associated Press: In the midst of a foreboding canyon scorched bare by the Sierra Nevada's most destructive fire in centuries, tiny ferns unfurl along a spring, black oaks push through charred soil normally blanketed with pine needles and a hawk soars above towering dead and denuded trees.
Just four weeks after the most intense day of California's Rim Fire -- when wind and extremely arid conditions created a conflagration that turned 30,000 acres of dense conifers and oaks into a moonscape -- life is returning...