first-level floor, up three stories, and out the roof—stood
a massive oak, its trunk encased by interior glass and its
branches and leaves canopied over the house. “We were
ready for our rural adventure,” says Babb, an avid hiker.
When she first saw the shelter-magazine-worthy aerie, she
recalls, “I fell in love with it.”
In August 2020, love turned to fear. A lightning storm
struck hills stretching between Portola Valley and the Pacific
Ocean—hills, that, like much of California and the West,
are parched from years of drought. The bolts set the hills
aflame. By the time five weeks later that firefighters put out
what had come to be called the CZU Lightning Complex
fires, the inferno had scorched some 86,500 acres and de-
stroyed about 1,500 buildings. The blaze came within aboutSIX YEARS AGO, Liz Babb and her husband, Angelo
Aloisio, retired financial-services executives and new emp-
ty nesters, sold their place in San Francisco and moved to
the woods. They bought a 1970s house on a steep slope
in Portola Valley, an enclave of forested canyons minutes
from Silicon Valley’s center that boasts a bohemian history,
a reputation for moneyed discretion, and jaw-dropping
views. It was an iconic—if, by local standards, modest—
northern California dream home: wood construction,
picture windows, multiple decks, and, everywhere, trees.
Lush vegetation blanketed the property: oaks, red-
woods, and all manner of shrubs and bushes. They envel-
oped the house, but not only that. Soaring through the
center of the structure—rising from the dirt, through the
WOODS CONSTRUCTION A thick canopy of trees, including an oak that grows through the center of the structure, make Liz Babb and
Angelo Aloisio’s Portola Valley home both distinctive and hard to insure.PHOTOGRAPHS BY WINNI WINTERMEYER