My greatest fear of a wildland fire is losing my forest.
I have spent enough time above timberline to know the experience
of returning to the comforts of the forest below.
I will never lose that bonding with the forest.
I’ve counted the rings on my largest trees
and they are 100 years old.
Losing our house would be a terrible inconvenience.
But that would likely be over in a few years.
After the fire, the views of Mt. Evans will still be there.
After the fire, the creek and ponds will still be there.
After the fire, the meadow will quickly recover.
It would take a century for all of my trees to grow back.
That loss would be unbearable.
Previous Articles
Mountain Pine Beetle
At the risk of being called “Captain Obvious,” I want to draw attention to the comeback being staged by the Mountain Pine Beetle in our “Evergreen” forests. I say comeback because there was a major infestation in the late 1990s. That’s when Summit County was hit so...
Fly and Grace
Wow. As I sit here writing, I just noticed that it’s raining again—one of those delicious, soaking showers. It must be almost a week now that the Global Warming Gods have taken pity on us! Now, let me share with you two of my favorite verses from John Denver’s “Rocky...
Something Difficult
Life’s journey is littered with choices between taking the easy road or the one more difficult. We often find the choice is driven by pragmatism—i.e. “This is not that important to me. I need to find the easiest way to move on.” But, what if you find that nothing is...
It’s Great To Be Alive
On my walk this morning, I stopped to smell the flowers.
AI Will Soon Eat Itself
I recently read an article about the Civil War battle at Antietam. The battle occurred on September 17, 1862 and has become known as the single bloodiest day in U.S. history with 23,000 total casualties, even surpassing the total casualties on D-Day when Allied forces...
What Others Think
Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway. —John Wayne Well, you may not know this, but there’s things that gnaw at a man worse than dyin’. —Charlie Wait If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try. —Seth Godin If you can’t explain it simply, you...
The Toughest Man…
As I have gotten older, I have taken to taking stock of long lost friends. Here is what I wrote about one in the January issue of 2018. Last week, Jim Harrell finally found a challenge he could not overcome. A rare lung infection took advantage of his lungs that had...
The Super Bowl
I want to mention how much I appreciate the Super Bowl. And, this comes from a guy who has never played a down of football... for obvious reasons. LOL! And it’s not that I love and/or appreciate the game and its rules, which are much easier to understand than hockey....
