Weather: The smoke came from a fire near El Rito. The heat came, as it does every summer, but without the complete aridity of last summer. Disturbances in the Pacific have kept moisture high in the atmosphere. Sometime, it even fell as rain.
Last useful rain: 7/16. Week’s low: 50 degrees F. Week’s high: 96 degrees F in the shade.
What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, desert willow, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red-tipped and Arizona yuccas, fernbush, Spanish broom, sweet peas, Russian sage, blue flax, hollyhocks, datura, coreopsis, blanket flowers, white cone flowers, cultivated sunflowers
What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Trees of heaven, buffalo gourd, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver leaf nightshade, alfalfa, white sweet clover, yellow mullein, velvetweed, Queen Anne’s lace, plains paper flowers, goat’s beard, Hopi tea, gumweed, toothed spurge, golden hairy asters, wild lettuce
What’s blooming in my yard: Betty Prior and miniature roses, yellow potentilla, catmints, lady bells, calamintha, Johnson’s blue geranium, winecup mallow, sidalcea, coral beard tongues, sea lavender, coral bells, lead plant, Dutch clover, white spurge, tomatillo, pink evening primroses, Saint John’s wort, large-flowered soapwort, Mexican hats, white yarrow, chocolate flower, plains coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, purple coneflower; pansies that wintered over
Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, nicotiana, pansies
Tasks: I decided this week, if ever I was going to get ahead of Nature, I would need to spend more time working outdoors. Since I had limited myself to an hour to conserve my muscles, I thought the best way to increase my work was to devote shorter amounts of time on more projects. Thus, I spent a half hour or more pulling heath asters, a half hour or less doing something strenuous like clipping dead wood, and a walk hour cooling down by replacing broken tiles.
Animal sightings: Rabbit, chickadees, hummingbird, geckos, monarch butterfly, hummingbird moth, bumble bees, crickets, grasshoppers, hornets, harvester and small ants
Weekly update: We had good solid rains last Sunday, and again on Tuesday. There wasn’t even much thunder or lightening, but apparently enough to ignite an area of ponderosa pine near El Rito. By Wednesday it covered 20 acres with low to moderate potential to grow. Then, in the last two days, the Forest Service spread it to 2,000 acres "to mimic natural fire conditions" [1]
Thursday, when they started lighting fires, the air was so foul I couldn’t go outdoors. Nothing was visible, but my shoulder and eyes hurt. When I came back in at 6 am, my nose was stuffed up and I was breathing through my mouth.
The weather bureau’s air-quality forecast showed thick smoke to the west, still coming from México, though it picked up additions as it flowed over the fires in southern New Mexico. I assumed that was the reason, because the last Forest Service update had not made its plans explicit. I didn’t work outside that day.
During the night, a mild wind was apparently enough to keep smoke, from whatever direction, from settling. I was able to be outdoors yesterday. However, in the evening, between 7:30 and 8:00 pm, the smoke returned in a haze over the Jémez. I could smell it on my back porch. I abandoned plans to check to see if any of this year’s shrubs needed water after temperatures had been in the 90s for hours.
The Forest Service website cloaked increasing the fire hundredfold in bureaucratic language that masked economic realities in philosophical phrases:
"The Carson National Forest is working hard to use lightning-caused fires to achieve many resource objectives. A values-driven strategy is being implemented on these fires which allows fire managers to incorporate different tactics to accomplish desired results. These tactics help reduce firefighter exposure while increasing the probability of meeting predetermined desired effects in relationship to values at risk. This assists the Forest in meeting land management objectives and managing these fires with the primary objective of returning natural fire back into this fire-adapted ecosystem." [2]
What this means, when translated into English, is that controlled burns in the spring no longer are popular: they cost money and they upset the public. So now the Forest Service is exploiting existing fires, when firefighters already are in the area, to accomplish the same ends.
While they trumpet their concern for the lives of the firefighters, money is still a factor. A spokesman said that by artificially expanding the El Rito fire they "significantly decreased the duration of the fire, thereby reducing the risk to firefighters." [3] The shorter the duration of the fire, the lower the costs.
There are other ways to maintain forests. One can send in crews to clear downed trees. Some in private business try to promote this as a way for them to go in a cut wood for profit, thereby replicating the conditions that caused the problems in the woodlands in the first place.
This general approach is rejected because it costs money. Remember, this May the Trump administration wanted to close nine centers that trained fire fighters and transfer the rest of the program to private contractors. [4] Because many of those centers were in states that voted Republican, the plan was abandoned.
The preference for fire is mainly driven by cost-benefit analysis, but it is bolstered by a romantic view that forests should be self-sustaining ecosystems like they were before whites settled near them. While we like to think we can restore Longfellow’s "forest primeval," it was an illusion even in 1847 when he wrote of a lost Acadia. [5]
Nature changes in response to humans. As forests have been preserved, people with and without money have moved near them. The first priority of the Forest Service is always protecting the nearby structures. If they exist, it brings in the chemicals; if they do not, they stop its spread and let it burn itself out.
One can’t fault any of the objectives. While I might prefer creating lots of relatively low-paying seasonal government jobs for individuals who don’t want to spend their days in a cubical, I also realize it’s difficult, with the best intentions, to manage such programs without graft and incompetence. But still, I do wish that while they wanted to preserve "wildlife habitat," they would do more than give a link to program lending HEPA filters to the rest of God’s creatures. [6]
Notes on photographs: Sea lavender (Limonium latifolia), Kelway anthemis (Anthemis tinctoria), and hybrid daylilies (who knows what Hemerocallis) on 6 July 2019.
End notes:
1. atperea. "Fire Activity and Size to Increase on the Francisquito Fire." New Mexico Fire Information website. 18 July 2019.
2. atperea. 18 July 2019.
3. atperea. "Ignitions Complete, Firefighters Securing Containment Lines." New Mexico Fire Information webiste. 21 July 2019.
4. Catherine Boudreau. "USDA Ends Long-standing Forest Service Job Training Program for At-Risk Youth." Politico website. 24 May 2019. It was going to transfer them to Alexander Acosta’s Department of Labor, but, of course, he since has resigned and no one’s in charge there.
5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847) began
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
6. atperea. 21 July 2019.
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