For two decades, Margaret Alicia Garcia called Greenville, California home.

She loved it.

We come from all walks of life.

We found our way to the mountains.

And we live side by side, you know, hippies, ranchers, self-proclaimed red necks.

And we just all make this beautiful place our home.

That's Garcia talking with me back in 2021.

We reached out to her because she had just published a eulogy for that beautiful place

in a column for Plumas News.

She writes those columns under her married name, Meg Upton.

In 2021, Greenville was largely destroyed by the Dixie Fire, still the second largest

on record in California.

When we caught up with her this week, she told us that even now, with most of the debris

cleared away, Greenville is still almost unrecognizable.

People talk about all the time about how it's hard to remember what was where.

And remembering like, oh, I lived on this street because we have no markers of anything.

After the fire, Garcia did make it back.

It was her daughter's senior year of high school.

She lived in a tiny house for a few months then at her mom's place, which survived the

fire.

But lots of people didn't return.

Before the fire, Greenville had a lot of older folks, retirees.

...