Tag Archives: Forest fire

I will not forget today

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Foothills south with wisps of Fern Lake fire far right.


Some days you could stick on the highest shelf, close the door and not come back. Not today. It will rest on my arm, warm; touch my breath, with rhythm; cradle my eyes, in colors; but mostly sing my heart a song.

(double click on each photo for larger and clearer)

It started with love. I woke remembering last night and my grandson’s birthday bash, a costume Halloween party. He loved it. Then I got up and watched the end of a movie, Medicine Man, about one man’s love for the land, love of a people ignored by the world and trampled by progress, and love of a woman who peeled away his shields and made him believe again. Believe enough to save the world from cancer.(If you haven’t seen the movie, the teaser is below. It’s worth it. I watch it every few months just to remind me of ideals wew should strive for.)

 

Then I ate breakfast with my love, at a restaurant named after my mother, Lucile’s. Not quite the spelling, but still weird.

Then I came home and wrote. That by itself heals wounds. To create a story from nothing is like painting with words. But to write a sequel to a story about a man’s love for his son, love of his grandson, lost love, new love, and love found? These are things that make me want to cure the world of wars, if not at least love a bit more.

So I had the main course, now it was time for desert. I went for a walk. Not an ordinary, trudging: one-step, two-step, repeat, repeat, ad nauseam, forever and ever. This was with music. Pandora played my favorites while fall filled my other senses. I had rhythm, color, song and dance. (click on the Youtube videos of the songs and listen while you read)

Fall aspen

http://youtu.be/u3NE6UuaLiY

Fall reds

http://youtu.be/IXPOHCsgWFw
So few people were out on such a wonderful fall day: not a cloud, without wind, low 70’s, the foliage past peak but still bright. What a shame. They were inside watching football, or snoozing, or playing a video game. I hoped not. I hoped they were fishing, or hiking in the hills, or painting people as they meandered through downtown. Or maybe getting ready for Halloween. That was the reason I didn’t see them. Surely.

Halloween is coming

It didn’t matter, though. You can’t take this day away. It’s there, etched in me the way a good song stays with you for a week.

Fern Lake fire sunset 10/20/12

 

I hope you find your day like today. Not hope, I KNOW you will. Love it. Keep it close. Let it breathe inside you. You deserve it.

Get outside and enjoy the wilderness soon. The fires may destroy your favorite area. And, winter is coming.

Winter is coming. Some leaves are already gone.

Milt
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$1 of each book goes to Veterans

 

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Okay, so I fish.

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Since my first memory, thanks to my dad and his love, fishing has been a part of me. And recently, finally, after years of hoping, I made it to Alaska.

Alaska from Alaska Air, mountains, glaciers, rivers. Almost to Anchorage.

Why fish? Because I love wilderness, and fishing takes me there. And over twenty years ago I decided to only fly fish. I’ve fished Scottish highlands, Colorado lakes and rivers over 11,000 feet high, Yellowstone rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico with no other boats in sight. Alaska may be the last great wilderness for me to see, right now. Where we went, you have to fly in on bush planes called Beavers.

 

Unfortunately, each place I also saw the result of climate change, all of which made me agree with Obama and disagree with Romney: more and stronger hurricanes in 2004/5–Hurricane Ivan drove us out of Pensacola; millions of acres of beetle-killed trees in the Rockies and this year over 8 million acres of forest fires, the High Park Fire visible from our back yard; and in Alaska, fewer salmon. They are moving north to rivers that used to be iced-over. They like it cold. I guess Yemen has salmon, too. I prefer the scenery in Alaska.

Most of the time I have fished by myself. There is something about being alone on a boat in the Gulf, or wading in a mountain stream. The quiet sooths and my thoughts wander wherever they want, mostly writing stories. I love it. Though I have to say, fishing with friends or family has its own draw. Especially in wild Alaska, where brown bears (Grizzlies–big ones)have never attacked three or more people. That’s what my two other friends on this trip kept telling me. Now, in Colorado, where I live, alone is fine. I can be on two rivers in a half hour, fish on. Fish on!

Alaska started out landing in a small lake and putting together the pontoon boat.

Then we floated down this river, 31 miles,

except the first day we dragged the boat a lot. It was shallow. We were tired by the end of the day.

But, way before the end of the day we started catching fish. Ken with a small grayling.

I don’t have all the pictures. The first day I tripped coming out of the tent and did a drop-and-roll . . .  right onto my camera. Toast. The disc compilation of photos from my friends cameras is coming, I’m told. Later.

At any rate, once we started catching fish, it never ended. The last day we fished, I think we caught a hundred fish, maybe apiece. I was very lucky. I caught a tiny variety: many, many, many, manymanymany grayling over 20 inches, and then equally as many, okay, more, moremoremore Dolly Varden (kinda like big brook trout), one 26 inches; and few and far between, salmon. I caught a few silver salmon, one big rainbow, a few pink salmon, and more Dolly Varden.

We caught them on . . . basically anything we threw—pegged beads, dry flies, mice, huge streamers, small streamers, nymphs, foam hoppers.

Then the rains and wind came, and I just wanted to be warm.

We crushed the barbs on the hooks, but in no way shape or form did we remove barbs from our obnoxious trash-talk to each other. If you taped it, you would think we hated each other. Not even close. The greatest thing was the other guys, and me I hope, helped out as much as we dissed each other. That is the measure of friendship. You dish it out, and you make sure there is a big bowl and a clean spoon to eat it.

Thanks, Scott and Ken. It was amazing. Now can I please have those photos?

Milt

I was sad that day

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Fern Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park

It was about four weeks ago. A beautiful day. I camped with my son at a high mountain lake, after a hike the day before that tested my knees and stamina. The morning brought glittering spider webs, round and symmetric, new as the first rays of sun that illuminated their wonder. Why did a spider make them so beautiful, their rungs so perfectly even, the concentric circles almost exact enough to have required a compass to trace them? An osprey glided over the lake, its chirping call common to most Americans, except in this mountain haven. An osprey at 9500 feet. Cool!

Golden fish with blood red lower jaws cruised the shallows, searching for breakfast—greenback cutthroat trout, nervous at any moving shadow, instinctively aware of osprey, or other predators. That would be me, a fly fisherman. I caught a few, hungry gulpers that pounced on the fly the instant it hit the water. Quick release and back they cruised, wiser to subsequent flies, but still strong, vibrant in color, an integral part of the beauty. High mountain peaks surrounded me, a few white valleys only small remnants of glaciers of old, before the world warmed. Glacier melt cascaded in rivulets down the mountain cliffs, filling the lake, gaining in strength down the valley, and finally quenching our thirst in the Front Range. 85% of the water we get comes from the mountain runoff.

At that thought, I was sad. The Cache la Poudre River was clean until the High Park Fire seared and glazed the earth so that water no longer seeped in, but flooded into the Cache la Poudre River, making it as black as soot. What caused the fires? Maybe it was too hot with too little rain for too long. Ya think?

 

Up here, miles from the High Park Fire, half the pine trees are rust-colored, dead to a beetle that is another harbinger of warming; not cold enough in winter now to kill them, so they kill the forest.

High Park Fire sunset from our back yard

Cache la Poudre River runs black with High Park fire soot after flooding rains

 

I was sad because my son who loves this wilderness as much as any, may never have his own children see these things. If the globe keeps warming, the snow will melt sooner, more fires will engulf the beetle-killed forests and the beauty, the world I’ve known, will be gone. Another fire may make all the biggest ones in the past piddling things. We could lose the fish, the moose and the coyotes.

All because humans, that would be us, must have energy to build, to drive, to heat, to seemingly survive in this twenty-first century. Yet, my son and I camped without electricity, without heat or AC, and still lived, though much more simply for a few days.

It was beautiful but I could not wait to drive my car as quickly as possible down the valley next to that glacier-fed river to get back to my comfortable bed, to be cooled by AC and enthralled by a movie on TV. That weekend I cut my lawn with a power mower. This winter I will stay comfortable, heating my home enough to roam the rooms in shirt sleeves.

Can we actually live well for more than a few days without all these things we deem necessary?

For my sons, daughters, and grandson’s sake I hope so. All those working on solar power, wind power, cars that run on natural gas or anything that leaves little carbon dioxide behind, keep trying. It’s worth it. I don’t really want a terrorist to make it happen like in Dan’s War. But if we keep it up, it could.

Milt

Fire, Wind, Water. Can Disaster Change Your Life for the Better?

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In the midst of what will likely be the worst forest fire in the history of Colorado, The High Park Fire, I think of Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, the disaster that brought us here, and my first post on this blog.

Those suffering from this fire: These are times that will not only test you, but can break you.

Don’t let it.

Can disaster change your life for the better?

September 16, 2004 I awoke at two a.m. to pitch black, wind howling outside, and a curious sound in the bedroom: my dog lapping water. But our wonderful blond lab, Maggie, lay at our feet, sleeping. The sound was swamp water percolating under the baseboards. Rolling off the mattress, my wife and I waded into stinky water, floating Purina Dog Chow and paper shredder confetti–welcome to the parade.

I’d had a great year: both daughters got married, I caught a 150 lb. tarpon on a fly rod, started a promising practice with great docs, and my son had orchestrated a surprise fiftieth birthday party. I was writing my first novel, a horror, techno-thriller about fictional events after 9/11, sure to outsell Steven King.

The day before the water came, the news said it was a monster: Hurricane Ivan, Cat 5 in the Gulf. I smashed one thumb and nearly fell off the ladder boarding up the second story windows. This made the inside a tomb of darkness, the garage door the only exit. Lynn and I discussed leaving the state. We filled the bathtubs, organized canned food and peanut butter (I could live off peanut butter and honey sandwiches for weeks), then moved the computer upstairs along with the important papers, dog food, fresh batteries in flashlights, etc.

At 7 p.m., in purple-olive twilight and paltry wind and misty rain, I played fetch outside with Maggie. No big deal. The news announced Ivan would weaken to Cat 3 at landfall. We decided to stay. Yes! No waiting for a week after the storm to get back over the bridge while looters had a field day, or water leaks went from tiny to disastrous.

We hunkered down—that’s hurricane talk—in our upstairs bedroom. The wind howled, trying to tear off the roof … right over our heads. No thank you. We trundled everything back downstairs, including a mattress, to the bedroom our son vacated last week. After all, our neighborhood had never flooded in recorded history. Who needed flood insurance? Our house had survived two other Cat 3′s with piddling damage. No prob.

Right. We’d never been in the northeast quadrant. Apparently we forgot.

For weeks afterwards we survived in a post-flood environment that reminded me of Sarajevo: feral dogs, fetid piles of rubbish, no water or AC, roving, camouflaged National Guard Humvees, and Red Cross water and food tents. I nearly lopped off a leg chain-sawing shattered trees, screwed up a knee replacing wallboard, and continued to work forty-hour weeks, sitting in rubbish-removal traffic jams for hours.

It shook our hearts and souls like a dirty rug. But we couldn’t get clean. The neighbors had the first, and last, Tiger Point trailer-trash party in their camper on their driveway next to the POD that held all their worldly goods. Their home was unlivable.

We sang, we drank, but we all knew: Never again.

The biggest lessons we learned? Things can be replaced. Loved ones cannot. Go after your dreams. Now.

My wife and I moved to Colorado, closer to roots and family. I wrote and guided fly fishing. She became a hooker—wool art hooking, okay. We camped in Yellowstone with Maggie. Then I realized I was not Steven King; gas prices skyrocketed; the adult kids moved back; guiding fly fishing made no money.

Time to go back to what I knew best, doctoring. I went to work for the VA.

Hurricanes and fire are nothing compared to war. War crippled our best, their bodies and minds. But not their souls.

Veterans taught me disaster can change your life for the better. My next novel, Dan’s War, was born.

Dan’s War is an award-winning techno-thriller with literary heart, about the end of world oil . . . in two weeks. Cajuns and one lone computer geek try to save us against an ecofanatic and his army. There’s love between a geek and a hottie Marine, a father trying to save a son, nanobacteria eating oil, and weird characters that will take you on an adventure to far away lands, and keep you turning pages wanting more.

Buy it now–Amazon:
Kindle e-book on sale now for SUMMER BEACH READ

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$1 of each book goes to Veterans

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New Short Story only a buck! All proceeds go to US Veterans More at my Facebook Author Page:http://tiny.cc/sumdo

Contact me at www.miltmays@gmail.com