Beltane Mountain Moon
A blue sky day again yesterday. As the wxgeek implies below, we will pay a price for the beauty of these days. May it only be anxiety. This will be our fourth summer here and we’ve yet to have an evacuation. Lucky.
(We’re in the upper right hand corner of the red in Colorado. These same maps look much better for July and August.)
We’ve done the fire prep things we can do; but, after reading Megafires by a UofC Boulder based investigative journalist who specializes in wildfires, I realized if we get a fire coming up Brook Forest Drive, we’ll lose our house unless firefighters stop the fire or protect our house. We’re in a lodgepole pine forest with scattered aspen groves. Fire behavior for lodgepoles, a pioneer species, is to crown, burning everything down so the forest can start over. These forests burn less often than the ponderosa dominated ecosystem at lower elevations; but, when they do, they take out everything in their path.
Big fun. Oddly, it’s not a source of anxiety for me because we’ve done what we can and the rest is statistical. Too, we decided a while back that we’ll just replace what we lose since stuff isn’t what’s important to us. Kate, the dogs, me, a few important papers. We’ve saved those last in a safety deposit box down the hill and all my writing is stored in the cloud or on flashdrives.
