Californians have always been concerned about wild fires, but did you know that one of the world's best loved writers once set fire to the central coast?

During an 1880 visit to "The Old Pacific Capitol, Monterey," Robert Louis Stevenson became fascinated by the specter of burning Monterey pines.

To visit these woods when they are languidly burning is a strange piece of experience. The fire passes through the underbrush at a run. Every here and there a tree flares up instantaneously from root to summit, scattering tufts of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. But this last is only in semblance. For after this first squib-like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very entrails of the tree. . . .

…I wished to be certain whether it was the moss, that quaint funereal ornament of Californian forests, which blazed up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. I suppose I must have been under the influence of Satan, for instead of plucking off a piece for my experiment, what should I do but walk up to a great pine tree in a portion of the wood…, strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The tree went off like a rocket….

Luckily, Stevenson escaped unscathed and later wrote one of his best-known books, Treasure Island, which contains descriptions that borrow heavily from his experience of our central coast.

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