Below, on the mountain's lee side, trees and shrubs from all parts of the world spread down the hillside to a landscape of casuarina trees ironwood, or she-oak and thorny chaparral around itshe-oak and
Sooner or later, though, the chaparral will burn whether as a result of lightning strikes or human action.
Besides, they say, the chaparral needs to burn for its own good.
Over the course of almost two months it devoured 65,000 hectares (160,000 acres) of chaparral and forest, destroyed 89 houses and claimed the lives of two firefighters.
But letting wildfires run their course especially at the frequency they occur nowadays can render the chaparral vulnerable to invasive, non-native species.
But that does not mean the chaparral needs to burn as frequently as it does.
What bothers Babbage is the thought that a changing climate could alter the chaparral in irreversible ways.
For centuries, the local Chumash people torched large swathes of chaparral in Babbage's neighbourhood to replenish the vegetation and provide better hunting.
With fire having been a recurring feature of the chaparral for thousands of years, only plants that have adapted successfully to being able to recover from flames have persisted.
Thanks to its Mediterranean climate of hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, the region is home to one of the largest chaparral biomes in the world.
All she wanted was a better quality of life for the 14,000 people of her home town, a place of cattle-raising in thorny chaparral amid dense tropical forest; to pull the place out of its neglect, in which most people "have to tear their souls apart every day to get a scrap of bread for their children".
