I remember the first time I saw images of what the 1988 wildfire did to Yellowstone:

Blackened trunks of naked lodgepole pine jutting from scorched earth like broken bones piercing burnt flesh
A charred skeleton of a forest, a corpse of ashen grassland
Wildland turned wasteland, devoid of wildlife
Devastation on an ecological scale, beauty scarred beyond recognition

How ugly, I thought
How sad
So much life and magic reduced to cinders
It will never be the same again, I thought
It will be a scar in the heart of wilderness

I was wrong, of course
The forest needed only time

Time for dead ash to turn to fertile soil

Time for returning water to give its gift of life

Time for seedlings and sprouts to reach for the sun

Time for fauna to return to flora

Time to heal

The forests and meadows of Yellowstone today are not the same as those before the fire
Neither are they something entirely new
They are an adaptation
They are a continuation
They thrive again, and again they are beautiful