WELCOME TO THE NEW

Guests who checked into the Westin Monache hotel in Mammoth Lakes this past summer were welcomed with an odd complimentary item: N95 masks, the kind you may have seen covering the faces of residents of Beijing, where smog is so bad it is known as the “airpocalypse.”

The Lions Fire was incinerating part of the Sierra Nevada’s Ansel Adams Wilderness nearby, producing plumes of hazardous smoke that settled in the air for weeks. Guests at the hotel were even seen wearing their masks while lounging on the hotel’s pool deck, as smoke permeated the normally pristine High Sierra air.

Similar masks were handed out at hotels throughout San Francisco in November, after air purifier company IQAir rated the city as having the worst air quality in any of the world’s major cities. Out of concern, the five-star Omni hotel welcomed guests with complimentary bottles of fruit-infused water and individually wrapped cold towelettes scented with lavender oil, gave suggestions on how to visit San Francisco without being outdoors and offered N95 masks, while air purifiers hummed in the lobby.

Has the ever-expanding wildfire season brought about, as Gov. Jerry Brown has suggested, a “new abnormal” for California travelers?

The short answer is yes. “New abnormal” was the expression Brown used when describing the spate of recent wildfires that have decimated the state. He predicted they will intensify and continue for the foreseeable future. “We have a real challenge here, threatening our whole way of life,” Brown said at a press briefing in November during the Woolsey and Camp fires.

“Just look at the Sierra on Google Earth,” says John Koeberer, CEO of the California Parks Co., which operates campgrounds, lodging and marina concessions on public lands. “The forest is orange from all the dead trees. It used to be green.”

Enjoying the natural beauty of California’s outdoors has been a beloved aspect of the state’s lifestyle since John Muir proclaimed that “wildness is a necessity.” But it is being threatened as the frequency and severity of wildfires have grown in recent years — decimating parks and forestland, blanketing the state in toxic air, and driving people indoors. The reasons are many: a long history of poor forest-management policy, aging utilities infrastructure, climate change, more human activity in natural places.

The immediate toll on the affected people, communities and environments can’t be overstated — many have lost everything. What is concerning is that the recent spate of fires is not an isolated incident, as Californians well know, and the situation appears to be getting worse.

Between 1984 and 2010, the number of wildfire acres that burned at high intensity rose by 50 percent, and consumed more than 60 million dead trees in our forests, according to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state-run nonprofit focused on conservation efforts.

“Right now, the Sierra Nevada region is at a critical point. A century of fire suppression, a shortage of restoration efforts and years of drought have placed Sierra forests ... at incredible risk,” according to the conservancy.

We are set up to travel this cycle of suffering and grief again and again. And because upwards of 80 percent of California tourism is generated by in-state residents, we aren’t losing tourism attractions, we’re losing a pillar of our way of life. This could easily mean fewer opportunities to camp and recreate outdoors or visit rural places in California.

The fires and smoke aren’t going away — but the travelers might.

In just the past three years, a visitor’s guide-full of California destinations has been singed or suffocated by wildfires — from Yosemite to Wine Country and Malibu to Lake Shasta. Seven notable wildfires occurred in 2016, four in 2017 and five in 2018, incinerating over 1.75 million acres, destroying over 24,000 homes and structures, displacing hundreds of thousands of Californians and, tragically, taking the lives of more than 120 residents and firefighters.

Despite the number of affected areas, little tourism infrastructure — hotels, attractions, wineries, trails — burned. The greatest impact has been to public lands that depend on entrance fees for operations and improvements, and to their local communities.

For example, the Whiskeytown and Santa Monica Mountains national recreation areas, which sustained major damage in recent wildfires, are beloved and used by nearby residents, not just out-of-towners.

“There is an emotional connection to our visitors,” said Whiskeytown National Recreation Area spokeswoman Jen Gibson. “They just want to be here. They love this park.”

But those local visitors have now lost access to the parks, and the parks have lost income from visitor entry fees.

The flames don’t just drive people from the immediate areas, they also cast an ominous shadow over associated destinations. For instance, during the 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties, social media-fueled commentary fed the misimpression that all California’s