On the first Saturday of September, hundreds of families, mine included, awoke at Huntington Lake to smoke, sirens and worried calls and texts from family members.  Thanks largely to the efforts of the Huntington Lake Volunteer Fire Department, everyone at Huntington Lake was evacuated safely, but over the next few days, the community watched with horror as the Creek Fire devastated many parts of the lake, including the loss of over 70 cabins, the main fire station for the VFD, several summer camps, and many hundreds of square miles of adjacent forest.  In the broader Central Sierra area, over 330,000 acres have been burned to date, and containment is not yet at 50%.

With news hard to come by, many turned to social media.  On Facebook, over 1,000 community members were part of a group called Raised at Huntington Lake, where we have shared photos, stories, tips and information about the lake for more than a decade.  Now, the group (and others like it) was a lifeline to learning the latest about the condition of our beloved lake.  Within days, the community had grown to over 3,000 members, and when word came through of what had been saved and what was lost, the group became a place of solace and grieving, alongside muted celebration and countless expressions of gratitude for the VFD and other first responders who had protected Huntington Lake at tremendous personal risk.

Before the crisis had even begun to stabilize, many group members were searching for how they could help.  Some of us have been at the lake for several generations, and others are new to the lake community.  But what we all have in common is a love for this place and the people who return (and plan to return) here year after year, decade after decade.  If we want future generations to experience the same lake we have, then ours will need to be the generation that rebuilds.  Several of us came together to discuss ways we could use the Raised at Huntington Lake community to promote the many rebuilding efforts that would be forthcoming.  This website and our associated social media channels are the result of these discussions.

Our goal is for Raised at Huntington Lake to serve as a trustworthy hub for the community’s recovery efforts.  We don’t plan to raise money directly, as there are many organizations already set up to do this, and in many cases the beneficiaries themselves will be organizing fundraising efforts.  Rather, our aim is to promote and amplify these efforts through this website, our Facebook page and group, Twitter, and elsewhere.  We care deeply about the community, and so we pledge to verify the legitimacy of each effort we promote.  In addition, we’ve created a blog where we will post regular updates on the fire damage, alert you to the latest recovery efforts, share resources for cabin owners dealing with damage, and more.

While I am the primary administrator of the Raised at Huntington Lake Facebook group, site and associated social media channels, this is a community project and we welcome the contributions of the community.  If you have a fundraising effort to promote, would like to contribute to the blog (we’d love guest posts!), or have any suggestions about how we can use this project to help the lake recover, please use our contact form to get in touch.  In the meantime, please help us spread the word by joining our Facebook group, following our Facebook page, joining our mailing list, subscribing to our RSS feed, following us on Twitter, and sharing our content, especially with those community members not on social media.

One refrain I have heard time after time is that the Huntington Lake community is different; that there’s something special about what we have.  Maybe this is the same thing everyone thinks about their community, but I don’t think so.  Part of it is because of our location.  With the larger and more populated Shaver Lake further down the road to civilization, the people who make it all the way to Huntington are largely those of us who know it and have been here before.  Another part is certainly the longevity.  Everywhere you look, you’ll see a cabin that has been in the same family for many decades and several generations; my own family has been at Idylwilde Tract since 1936, and mine is the fourth generation charged with maintaining it.  Whatever it is, this is a close-knit community like no other I have known, and that’s why I am confident that we will rebuild better and stronger than ever before.

Stay tuned to Raised at Huntington Lake for more on how to help, and remember to spread the word to your friends and family on and off social media.  Thanks for reading!

Sean Wilson is the creator and administrator of the Raised at Huntington Lake project, and a fourth-generation cabin owner at Idylwilde Tract.  You can reach him at sean@raisedathuntingtonlake.com.