Jay Gamel, 76, still talks about his Northern California home in the present tense, as if nothing had happened. “The place is a paradise by any measure,” says Gamel, who is semiretired. “The mountains are beautiful, the surroundings are gorgeous. It’s a postcard.”

For 26 years, Gamel had lived in — no, reveled in — his little redwood cabin in the Sonoma County town of Kenwood, where he edits a twice-monthly local newspaper. Gamel, who moved there from Chicago, thought he would never leave the little enclave known as Adobe Canyon, in the Mayacamas range, about 90 minutes north of San Francisco.

“That place is everything to me,” he says. “It has been my life. It’s the center of my being.” California wildfires scorch retirement dreams Or it was, until last October, when hot, dry easterly winds known as Diablos drove a fierce wildfire across the Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

Known as the Glass Fire, the flames tore through more than 67,000 acres of wine country, destroying more than 300 homes, including Gamel’s. “It’s a heartbreak,” says Gamel, sighing heavily and audibly trying hard to keep it together.

He doesn’t mourn the loss of the house itself as much as his slice of paradise lost. “It’s all burned up. My trees are gone, and the ones that aren’t gone will have to go,” says Gamel. “I know the land will heal, but long after I’m gone.”

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