"Slowing down and working with your hands and being connected to the earth in that way is very important," says farm volunteer Mark Ferguson. "It's easy to forget that nature is all around us."

The new normal for Western wildfires is abnormal, with increasingly bigger and more destructive blazes. Understanding the risks can help communities avert disaster.

"There's an ad hoc retreat happening in the world around us," says Stanford Earth's Katharine Mach – and it's a matter of time before the pressures toward retreat will mount from all directions.