POINT REYES REJUVENATED IN WAKE OF 1995 WILDFIRE.

Byline: Patrick Hoge Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

Jacqueline Kazaks walked along a golden meadow above the Point Reyes National Seashore, surrounded by charcoal tree trunks left like skeletons in the wake of the huge Vision fire of 1995.

``At the roots of every dead tree, there are a zillion seedlings,'' said Kazaks, who was recently visiting the park from LaCrosse, Wis. ``The wildflowers are gorgeous - purples and fierce red.''

Kazaks, her husband, Klavs, and their 16-year-old son Olavs, are among the fortunate who will get to see nature regenerating from the blaze, which burned for two weeks last October and consumed 15 percent of the park.

``It's all coming back miraculously. It's really spectacular to see,'' said park spokesman John Dell'Osso. ``There's this mosaic out there.''

From steep forested ridges down canyons choked with coyote brush, across rolling grasslands and finally a salt marsh, the Vision fire - started by an illegal campfire on nearby state land - marched to the beach at Drake's Bay before it was contained.

Bare trees and white ash covered hillsides, evoking the image of Vermont in winter.

But even before the first rain, greenery was pushing up from blackened stumps of bushes, and grasses began to spread wildly across the open spaces.

Today, there are fields of poppies in the higher elevations, with purple and yellow wildflowers tinting the hills as they turn golden with summer dormancy. Leaves cover trees that look as though they should be dead.

At the northeast edge of the park, meanwhile, the sounds of hammers and saws fill the air as work crews rebuild residential areas.

``The spirit of rebuilding and replanting is here,'' said Luella McFarland, who with her husband, Keith, was meeting with a local fire official to learn about new building codes.

The McFarlands, who live in Los Altos, bought their house on Inverness Ridge in 1983 as a vacation home. Today there is only a chimney and foundation.

The fire has given scientists a rare chance to study the effects of fire in Point Reyes.

A number of state and federal agencies, as well as local universities and volunteer groups, are helping conduct fire-related research projects.

One plant of particular concern is the Bishop pine, a species that relies on fire to coax its cones to open and release seeds in abundance. Cones will open on hot summer afternoons, but such seed spreading is on a small scale.

Seeds of Bishop pines and various other kinds of trees also do better when landing in nutrient rich ash soil that has been cleared of competing underbrush.

Another area of interest is the effect of fire on underground fungi that have symbiotic relationships with trees, helping them to obtain water and nutrients while gaining carbohydrates.

Most wildlife fared well during the fire, either escaping through flight or hunkering down in wetlands. Smaller mammals, however, were hit hard.

The Point Reyes jumping mouse, for example, was largely wiped out in the burn area. The mouse, which lives in grass thickets along streams and near seeps in west Marin County, is an important food source for larger animals.

The Point Reyes mountain beaver, a muskrat-size animal found only in west Marin County that builds an intricate network of shallow burrows in dense scrub brush, was virtually wiped out.

The most primitive living rodent in the world, 60 percent of the mountain beaver's known population was in the burn zone.