Summer Woolly Mammoth Moon
Smoky the Bear’s fat index finger points at Very High on all the fire danger forest signs we drive by. In Evergreen the fire station there says Extremely High. The Spring Creek Fire is at 103,000 acres burned and 35% containment. The 416 is at 54,000 and 45% containment. The Weston Pass Fire has closed 285 at Fairplay and is at 12,000 acres with 17% containment.
There’s a lot of low level anxiety here, knowing all it would take is a careless camper, a lightning strike, an automobile accident to put us in danger, too. The big fires are in the southern and southwestern parts of the state where some areas have passed beyond extreme drought conditions, so the fuel load is tinder dry.
We are left not with trust, then, but only hope. Hope that fire will not burn down our houses and upset our lives. Once Kate and I decided that if it burns, it burns and we move on, my anxiety level decreased. We chose to live here, chose to build our Colorado life in an area vulnerable to fire.
Choices, like our psyches, are never only this or only that. We moved here to be closer to the grandkids, yet to have our own life in the mountains, too. That is, we chose to move from the relatively safe from fire Andover (though the occasional derecho, tornado and hail storms were destructive.) to the wildlife/urban interface of the Rocky Mountains. It’s desirability is captured by its adjectives, we are where the wildlife live, yet urban amenities are also close. We have the beauty of the Rockies, the mule deer bucks and does that visit our yard, the elk that bugle in the fall, the mountain lions that cough in the night, black bears and all manner of other creatures. Yet, we also have the existential danger, especially high in early and mid-summer, of fire. Not an either/or, but a both/and.
Life, too, though not a choice we made (but to continue our life is a choice), puts us in an even more dire dilemma. We were thrown by circumstance into the life/reality interface, knowing that the wildfire of our death grows increasingly less contained as we age. At some point it will engulf us, burn out the wild mind that has carried us from birth. I’m ok with that, too. Not that I have a choice.
