Tag Archive | wildfire

Firefighters

Aug17

Holding the unfolding tragedy of Lahaina in mind and heart, I encourage readers to donate as you can to one of the reputable efforts to support survivors. World Central Kitchen is on the ground feeding people, and Maui Humane Society is trying to help thousands of pets who need medical attention, food, and to be reunited with their families.

With this perspective, I’m grateful that the local wildfires are limited and crews are gaining ground. Three fires are burning in a 60 mile or less radius, one east, one north, and the Little Mesa Fire to the west, which has been holding steady for the past few days at around 3500 acres. Now 30% contained, its smoke still colors the horizon in this evening’s photograph above. The low plume blends with rain toward the left between the two clusters of trees, and blows north across the horizon til it turns orange toward the right edge.

I’m grateful for firefighters the world over.

Unbroken

Jun13
Bumblebee on native thistle down by the pond, Wren poking around for something to put in her mouth.
I’m grateful for arugula, or rocket as it’s sometimes called because it germinates and grows so fast. A second harvest from the single short row I planted turned into this Peppery, Creamy Greens with Eggs recipe yesterday, including perennial onions and a few leaves of orach from the garden, heavy cream, and Bad Dog Ranch eggs.
Then I enjoyed it watching a video of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that Dan Rather had linked to in his newsletter the other day.
I’m grateful again today for PEAS, harvesting all the 2″-3″ snow peas on the vines this evening, and popping them in the freezer. More are on the way, and I am happy to see how long they’ll continue to flower and fruit.

Wren and Rocky rode with me to get the mail last week before Rocky went home, and I stopped to snap this cute picture of them poking their noses out the windows. Wren is snapped into her car seat with the strap just long enough that she can enjoy the fresh air. I wondered a couple of times when she’s ridden this way with the window all the way down whether she could (or would) try to jump out, and it’s one reason I keep her snapped in. It did occur to me that it was possible for her to jump out even snapped in, but I didn’t think it was likely. And then today, it happened. In just the same place I took this picture a week ago, she leapt out the window and hung there by her collar scrabbling at the door. It was a horrifying moment, and like a cartoon at the same time. Her little face looking in terrified, her body hanging by the collar and thrashing.

I pulled over and jumped out as fast as I could, the whole few seconds wondering if she’d break her neck or slip out of the collar, and made it around to the window in time to prevent either and plop her back into her car seat, still attached by the strap. An orange jeep slowed as I returned to my door and I waved them on in thanks–they must have seen the whole thing unfold. Back inside I rolled up the window, but she was so upset she jumped to the back seat and tried to strangle herself again so I unclipped her and rolled up all windows but mine. Crossed the road to the mailbox, picked up the mail, drove down to the middle of the stretch to make a safe U-turn as always, and back to the driveway, back to the house. All the while in some altered state of shock and gratitude. “You could have died,” I kept telling her, “I can’t believe you’re still alive.” So I come to the end of this day grateful that both her neck and my heart remain unbroken.

If you look real hard you can make out the faint outline of the West Elk Mountains through the smoke haze that deepened throughout this windy day. Celebrating our own aliveness after her brush with death we took a sunset walk, grateful in a melancholy way that the fires aren’t in our woods today, and feeling deep compassion for the people, trees, and other wild creatures whose lives have been upended by yet another climate-chaos fueled wildfire this summer.
For current wildfire information check out Inciweb from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. Today’s smoke here is attributed to the Pipeline fire just north of Flagstaff, AZ, which started yesterday morning and grew to 5000 acres by noon today… Earth’s climate is broken.

Stellar’s Last Days: a Stroke?

Sep17

It was a beautiful morning. I’m grateful that Stellar and I got to enjoy a half-hour ramble off our usual trails, just for a change of pace. He’s doing really well considering he suffered some sort of neurological incident last weekend. You can tell by looking at his left eye, how both lids droop. It was just my best guess, until Karen asked Dr. Dave to check out this and a couple other pictures. His response was:

“The issue would appear to be a neurological one. The two most likely causes are stroke and a viral infection of the nerve supplying the eyelid. Other possibilities are a tumor near the nerve, or a traumatic incident to the nerve. Similar lesions in the brain can cause  signs as seen here. In any case palliative care is probably the treatment of choice as there are possibilities of recovery with no treatment.”

I am so grateful for the support and input from these friends, who despite such busy lives of their own took time to consider my concerns for my dear dog. I’m grateful for the bonds of community and friendship, that can lay dormant for a long time and wake when needed at a moment’s notice.

Meanwhile, we’re still contending with the hindquarter weakness, notably in his right leg, which tends to turn out and is often unable to straighten under him. But he’s a stoic, noble animal, and he keeps dragging himself up and out whenever I ask if he wants to go for a walk. Once he’s out the gate his nose takes over, and he joyfully sniffs his way through the woods, intermittently looking back for me and adjusting his course to mine. I’m grateful for his perseverance, his devoted companionship, and his unconditional love and acceptance.

I’m grateful for the beauty around me, whenever I take time to turn my attention to it. This evening, sun lighting the sprinkler caught my eye. Though the camera couldn’t quite capture the glitter of it.
I’m grateful for this and all the other trees I live among. I’m grateful for trees in general, and for all the new scientific insights and understandings currently arising about just how sentient and interconnected they are. As my heart breaks for all beings in the path of wildfires, I feel especially concerned for and attached to the idea of the giant sequoias now threatened by the Paradise Fire in Sequoia National Park. I’m grateful, though, that this little patch of trees where I live survived another day without burning up.

A House

Aug8
Mountains invisible this morning, eight miles away. Midday it smelled not only smoky, but downright acrid, from fires in California.

I’m grateful today, especially, and every day, for a roof over my head, and four walls; windows and doors I can open or close at will; a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping loft, and some other sort of rooms: I am profoundly grateful to live in a house. Especially today, when many people have lost their houses to wildfires ravaging the American West, the Mediterranean, Europe, and other parts of the globe; and when many have lost their houses due to evictions, and other manmade catastrophes. I’m grateful that after our smoky walk this morning, we were able to retreat into the relative safety of our little mud hut, close up all the windows and doors, turn on the new swamp cooler (for which I’m also deeply grateful), remaining cool, comfortable, and safe, and breathe fairly clean air all day.

I’m grateful that it cooled down a lot today, and tonight well after dark the stars are out in a clear sky, smoke having settled or blown through. My throat is sore, my nose itches and runs, my eyes are scratchy; Stellar wheezed and panted all day but sleeps quietly at the moment. What about the hummingbirds? Their minuscule lungs! How do they manage in this smoke? And we’ve got it easy. Farther west, closer to the fires, in the fires… it boggles the mind and breaks the heart, the hardship and suffering of humans and all the wild creatures. I’m grateful for the temporary luxury of shutting it all out, closing my eyes, and sleeping between soft, clean sheets for one more night at a time.

Another Sunset

Jul10

Grateful for another sunset, another fulfilling, exhausting day in fellowship with the kindest, most mindful people I know. Two-thirds through our graduation retreat, twelve hours each day together virtually yet meaningfully, sharing lessons, learnings, creativity, and cultivating heartfelt connection with people across the country and a world away. Grateful for one of the most transformative experiences of my short life, this past Mindful Learning Year. Grateful for another day with dear Stellar still moving pretty well, and another precious day of relative safety here, while fires ravage the land elsewhere and paint the sun orange again.

Each Day

Jun13

Some days make me feel just as wide-eyed as these little dogs; in fact, most days do, practicing gratitude. I’m grateful today for the opportunity to do chihuahua for a little while; for clearing the air despite the smoke; for getting my hands on some chicks that are all named Dinner; for perspective on some of my less healthy habits; for connection with family and friends; and for the courage to open and play my dusty piano again after years.

I’m grateful that last night’s fireworks over the reservoir didn’t go rogue and cause a blaze, and that no one was stupid enough to celebrate Pioneer Days with home pyrotechnics; I’m grateful that wildfire smoke remains distant and we can still breathe here, albeit with extra sneezing, coughing, and just a hint of nose blood. I’m grateful for each day with breathable air, knowing that fire is certain this summer and location of fire uncertain. A new fire south of Salt Lake has consumed more than ten thousand acres in less than a day, and another four-day old fire near Moab exploded today. Seeing a sky like this evening’s reminds me not only of last summer’s horrendous smoke, but of the tragic summer of 1994, when the Wake Fire in our valley burnt three thousand acres in a couple of days; its impact was quickly eclipsed on its third day by the Storm King fire near Glenwood Springs that blew up and killed fourteen firefighters. Everything we hold dear is so tenuous.

Not only because of wildfire, of course, or the slow-moving catastrophe that is climate chaos, but because impermanence is the nature of all things. Our evening walk was especially poignant in the coppery glow of the smoky sunset: Not only from the oppressive weight of the big picture, but the looming loss of the very personal was readily apparent in dear Stellar’s feeble gait. We turned around before the first gate and he hobbled back in to his comfy bed for the night. I’m grateful for each day that we both wake up alive, and I don’t have to make that horrible decision to call his time. I’m grateful for the mindfulness practice that allows me to enjoy our remaining time together, to recognize that one bad day is often followed by a few good ones, and to accept the inevitable end of both our lives. I’m grateful for the inspiration and motivation that comes from knowing that “Death is certain, time of death uncertain.”

Fragrance

May28

My own! I found ‘my own’ Fremont holly this afternoon by its fragrance. All fragrance in the desert is enhanced by heat, it seems: an afternoon walk through the juniper-piñon forest smells so different than a morning walk, once the sun has softened the saps. I relish these hot walks, but rarely indulge anymore, the paths too hot on bare dog paws, and the ambient temperature hard on Stellar’s respiration recently, in his last aging days. But this afternoon late we took a short loop walk north and west of the yarden, a path we travel many mornings when it’s cooler, less fragrant, and that’s when I smelled it.

A gentle whiff, a hint, on the warm breeze… at first, a nose-tickling memory, that big holly uphill, just south of the fenceline… too close… there’s one nearby, I can smell it… I followed my nose even as Stellar followed the path ahead, and saw through the trees, off to the right, a bright yellow glow beyond deep green boughs. A treasure found! ‘My own’ Mahonia fremontii, in ‘my own’ woods! I knew there had to be one, and knew this was the season to hunt for it with my nose. This shrub has grown here for decades invisibly; I’ve walked within forty feet of it almost daily the past few years. Only by noticing its cousin elsewhere nearby, inhaling its intoxicating, almost cloying aroma, and paying attention, did I manage to find it this spring.

Not nearly as huge as the neighbor’s, nor as tangled, ‘my own’ Fremont holly stands alone and sculptural between a tall piñon and a few junipers, not far off the Breakfast Loop trail, toward the draw before the horse ranch. In the heat of late afternoon its fragrance intensified, leading me to it. I’m grateful for fragrance: of the wild holly, the white iris, the pink honeysuckle covered in bees, the last lilac… Grateful, too, though frightened, late this night, for the fraught, forewarning fragrance of smoke on the dark breeze: there’s a fire somewhere, already. We’ll know more later.

Color Explosion

Jun15

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Color everywhere! From the garden to the skies. Last weekend was the Crawford Pioneer Days fireworks display, possibly the only one in the state for the rest of the summer. Through the year, the Crawford Fire Department, a dedicated volunteer corps, keeps boots out on cashier counters everywhere, and people drop in change or a larger donation. They shoot off a spectacular long display from the peninsula in the middle of Crawford State Park reservoir, so there is no danger of sparking a wildfire.

Everyone in my house seemed a little wigged out when I got home. They haven’t seemed to mind fireworks before now. The dogs rushed outside and one was reluctant to come back in, and one of the cats streaked through the house from door to door as though she couldn’t wait to get out. A little more active energy than has greeted me in previous years when I returned home from fireworks. But everyone settled down quickly. I’m glad I’m not home for the fireworks, so I can imagine it doesn’t bother my dogs. Rocky trembled in our arms for awhile, but then he settled down when we kept his ears covered.

They are routinely among the best fireworks displays I’ve seen in my life, and that includes Manitou Springs 4th of July, and the 1976 US Bicentennial fireworks over the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall in DC. Those were both spectacular in their own way, but never in my life would I have ever imagined that I would sit in a small group of good friends year after year enjoying the best fireworks ever in our own back yard.

This year we watched from the yard of a Reluctant Host at the north end of the reservoir. Here, in the shallow V formed by the valley, fireworks filled the sky, sometimes startling us with how high they blew up, or their size, or color and intensity, the largest blooms filling the entire night sky. Patterns, colors, trajectories, subtleties, each firework is its own one-time moment, taking up our attention completely as we watch its trajectory.

Our host was reluctant because for years his dogs were undone by the explosions. Also his tender heart knows the terror that numerous other pets and wildlife feel with that horrendous violent noise. It’s been a few years since his sweet old dog died, the one he hid in the closet with to comfort during every fireworks, while the rest of us partied and watched from across the reservoir. I persuaded him, bribed him actually, to let us watch from their house this year; promised they wouldn’t have to host anything else for five years. Silly me. Because (despite having some grim thoughts about “rockets red glare” and our increasingly militaristic society) after that display I want to watch from there every year.

And then the next morning, at the top of the driveway as I was heading out, a small white dog, some smooth-coated terrier, ran in from the road. I stopped and got out and crooned to it but it ran on past the car too fast for me to catch, clearly running from something, likely the previous night’s fireworks. He wore a collar and was panting hard but not close to stopping as he trotted on over the hill through the sage flat toward the neighbors’ fence. I hope he was on his way home, but he looked disoriented and lost. I notified a few neighbors to the south, and hope someone was able to stop him. It made me so sad.

The tracks my mind goes down sometimes. I let my feelings turn into thoughts and pass through me, but still sorrow lingers when I let my speculation go again. Exactly the kind of heartbreak that’s made our Reluctant Host unfond of fireworks for years. 

Weights and measures. One night of fireworks, though, is nothing compared to the havoc the 416 Fire is wreaking on the San Juan National Forest north of Durango, well over 100 miles south as the crows fly, and flying they are now. We’ve waked to the smell of smoke several mornings this week, and I come inside off and on during the days depending on winds. I woke yesterday early and shut all the doors and windows to keep out the smoke, then lay back down and meditated on the ramifications.

The last known grizzly bear in Colorado was killed in the San Juans in 1979, but no one has been able to prove that no more survive. I imagined a grizzly mother with two cubs trying to outrun the rampant monstrous fire that has been devouring those mountain woods for the past two weeks, now up to 33,000 acres and unstoppable. Or a black bear mother with cubs. Or a herd of pregnant cow elk or mule deer does. Rabbits and foxes and coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, mice, and birds: hawks and eagles, songbirds, hummingbirds, all fleeing for their lives and getting incinerated as the fire creates its own erratic winds in what is known as extreme fire behavior. Access to the entire national forest has been closed for the foreseeable future, with some hikers and campers alleged to remain in the wilderness. More than 2000 homes north of Durango have been evacuated. The fire is not expected to be contained until at least the end of July.

It’s on our minds. We can’t help it. We’re praying for rain, not only for the San Juans but for our own parched ground, our fields scorched and fraught with water wars. Blessed is standing in the rain this morning, a single three-minute sprinkle with the sun shining, wetting me no more than if I’d stepped through my garden sprinkler slowly. We have high hopes that remnant fringes of Hurricane Bud will saturate our sad land tomorrow. We are not concerned about new shoes or handbags or golf clubs, or where to go clubbing tonight. We country mice are praying for rain.

Meanwhile, while I have water I am spreading it liberally throughout my own little paradise, my refuge, my sanctuary, and sanctuary to birds and butterflies and bees, and any other wild creatures who pass this way; and I am breathing deeply the penstemon perfume, and thinning peaches, and cutting lettuce, and doing the best I can to cultivate some peaceful shred of mind in the midst of climate and constitutional chaos. Making these images soothes me, and may seeing them soothe you also.

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Western tiger swallowtails circle the yard in seemingly random loops that resolve into patterns when observed over a long enough afternoon. The ancestral butterfly bush, Buddleia alternifolia, attracts them as well as other butterflies and lots of bees.

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Penstemon palmeri, and hybrids, self-sow with abandon throughout my yard, and are buzzing now with Bombus borealis, huge yellow and black bumblebees, gentle giants.

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Yellow Bucket

 

Summer Trees

Jul30

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Mindfulness teaches us to be with all things as they arise, and let them pass through us in the moment, and move on. May I remember to be with both despair and joy as they come, and let them play on through.

The fruit trees are generous this summer, and none more so than the apricot. Throughout the valley, peaches, pears, apples, all ripen extravagantly. A banner cherry harvest for the commercial orchards, and I’ve enough in the freezer for three pies thanks to Ellie and her prolific sour cherries, tiny shiny scarlet globes best pitted with a simple squeeze between fingers and gentle tug on the stem, too small for the pitter. No one has seen a fruit year like this for a very long time. Everyone is grateful.

Everyone is rolling in apricots. Neighbors are having a cookout to lure people to take away theirs. Suzi is generously drying the first round from my tree, and I’ve just picked the third. As many remain on the tree as I’ve already harvested. I’m staying just ahead of the birds; they peck the very ripest and every few days I pick what’s almost perfect and finish ripening on the counter. I get lucky and find some at their peak unpecked.

The more I pick the more I see I never saw before. Fred tried to warn me: Don’t be greedy, he said, and encouraged me weeks ago to thin them to a fist width apart. I couldn’t do it. I did thin them some, a couple of times, as I did with the peaches both before and after he gave me a hands-on lesson. Eight or ten peaches on a limb this size, he said. Maybe I should go thin them again, if the apricots are any indication. Which, of course, they are. I’m so grateful for his pruning, his advice, his instruction.

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I have three times more apricots in one wooden bowl than I’ve ever had on this tree in all its fifteen years. (When did I plant it? Fifteen? Twenty years ago? Somewhere in between? I’m grateful I can no longer remember everything. It makes interacting with people easier, but it doesn’t really help in the garden.) Fresh apricot recipes are stacking up in my recipe folder. The tortoise and the mule deer eat those that drop, or that I throw over the fence if they’re scarred or nibbled or too green, or if there’s a wasp feasting inside.

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After the third harvest... still plenty for people and other animals.

The apricot tree after the third picking… still plenty ripening for people and other animals. Never in any of my gardens through the years have I seen such bounty.

I’ve harvested three big bowls and one small one in the past week, with more to come. A generosity of apricots. And still they glow in abundance on the bright green tree, strolling grey storm clouds behind them. An uncontrollable satisfaction rises in my soul, the joy of a gardener. Because of me, the time, the water, the help tending through the years, this fruit tree thrives and gives back lavishly this summer.

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Another summer tree didn’t fare so well last week, a big juniper. We had a knock-down drag out lightning storm. People were talking about it for days. It was right on top of us, some said. I felt the electricity, said others. It was SO loud! more exclaimed. At Tai Chi, Deborah said The whole sky lit up, you could see every leaf, and there was a bolt through it, and in the bolt a fireball. Twice I saw that. I saw it and thought, Did I really just see that? And then it happened again.

In twenty-four years in this valley I haven’t experienced a lightning storm quite like that. An occasional strike too close for comfort in a wide-spread or fast moving cell. Once while I was standing in my open French door lightning struck a juniper not far in front of me and knocked me back a step. But never an intense cluster for fifteen minutes right on top of the neighborhood, one hard bolt after another, sky lighting up and crashing in the same instant, over and over. The dogs pressed close on the couch where I lay watching a movie. Then it passed, and we all started to relax.

After awhile I smelled smoke. Oh no! From the tower I scanned all directions and could not see flame or flickering, but the strong smell blew on a steady wind from the south. I called dispatch and learned that a truck was on the way to a burning tree somewhere in the next block.

I couldn’t sleep for hours. I climbed the tower again and checked the air before turning in, and found it sweet and pure.

It turned out Cynthia had also smelled smoke, ventured out with a lantern toward the canyon, and found the burning tree, initiating the chain of calls that led the brave fire laddies to it. Grass was burning all around it, she said. It was scary! It could have lit the woods on fire and burned down all our houses if she hadn’t located it right away. It was scary. The volunteer fire department put it out and chopped up the tree with chainsaws to make sure the fire didn’t lie down overnight, to spring up again the next hot dry day with a breeze.

It happens sometimes that a fire lies down in a snag or a hollow and smolders for hours or days before just the right wind ignites it and literally blows it up into a sudden monster fire, like the Wake Fire outside Paonia in ’94. A guy dutifully went out that night and put out the tree, but it blew up the next morning while the whole community was downtown celebrating July 4th at the Cherry Days Festival. The fire burned 6000 acres and three homes in just two days, at that time the fastest fire on record in the state.

Or just across the mesa in ’05 when a ditch burn crept into a stump and lay down for days after the rancher thought he’d extinguished it. Ladies started arriving for a Clothes Exchange, and when I greeted them at the gate after setting up the patio, they said What’s that behind you? A thick plume of black smoke rose beyond the trees. A dozen women ate and drank and tried on each others’ cast-off clothing as a helicopter hauled water from the reservoir and the slurry plane flew overhead. We were half naked anyway and flashed our tops. The pilot dipped his wing. Ellie called to report that a half dozen more guests were turned away at the fork in the road, the mesa was closed at all roads leading in, and we might be evacuated in ten minutes. There was a scramble to load up the Mothership with pets and valuables just in case.

The day after Cynthia’s Tree burned up, a gullywasher, a real Florida frog choker my visitor called it, dumped half an inch in half an hour, with only a few thunderclaps and lightning bolts in the distance. The monsoons are upon us. That evening we went down the road for dessert. It was a relief to know the smoke that greeted us came from the fire in the metal pit that would toast our marshmallows, on a perfect cool summer night in the warm company of our million dollar neighbors.

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Gourmet s’mores made with Lindt salted caramel chocolate, pre-melted in a skillet in the fire.

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Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 8:45 p.m.

Jun25

The next day I got my bumblebee on the rose.

The next day I got my bumblebee on the rose.

...and a few days later on the Penstemon palmeri...

…and a few days later on Penstemon palmeri…

And then on gallardia...

And then on gallardia…

...and columbine.

…and columbine.

I stumble into evening, into this playground of beauty. It is dusk and the garden is still buzzing and fluttering with pollinators. I feel great. I’ve reclaimed two major areas of weeds, and tamed the pathways between them. I worked inside in the heat of day, went out to a client in town, drove home and saw again the smoke from the roaring fires to the southeast. Yesterday, too, in the afternoon, under thick cloud cover, as I drove home I saw sandwiched between the low, grey sky and the dark ridge of horizon, a different, dark, curly billow, the roiling plume of this monstrous blaze. Today, the big fire more of an ominous smudge, and a smaller plume a little farther west. This beauty feels precarious.