Cheryl Dumont knew just where she had buried the gold and silver coins: down a ravine from her home by a big Douglas fir.
After Dumont lost her entire marijuana crop, her income for the year, she was anxious to see whether that savings had survived the Redwood fire.
She hiked down to the tree with a shovel and started digging for the plastic box holding the coins. Two feet deep she found what a week before was worth $40,000. It was a melted mess of gold, silver, plastic, dirt and pine needles.
She was among hundreds of growers — big and small, fully permitted, semi-legal and pure outlaw — devastated by the fires in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties.
Their losses illustrate how, despite new laws to make the marijuana industry legal in California, many farmers remain uninsured and trapped in a cash economy that leaves them vulnerable to natural disasters.
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