Tag Archives: HIgh Park Fire

Beautiful people

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Last weekend I watched the beautiful people, athletes of the NFL Playoffs vying against one another on a football field, and stars of the Golden Globes. The thing that hit me was most of them are not what they seem. The straight teeth, smooth skin, perfect bodies, eyes without glasses, it all gives us the illusion that they are real, perfect, and what we should all aspire to be. But really, do we all want to be those beautiful people on the outside? Or is it what’s inside that counts?

Every day there are people with crooked teeth, glasses, bad skin, built like pears who make businesses run, families flourish, lives grow, all because they care, they try. Sure, they worry about what others say, but they just keep going. They don’t get accolades from newspapers, million dollar contracts to play a game, or pretend to be someone else. They have to live in their own skin every day and they do it and keep doing it. Without them, our businesses, our military, our country, our families would be lost. In addition to the Golden Globes (for they will never go away) we should have a Golden Person award. But we don’t. So here are a few. If you get a chance, e-mail them and tell them how much they mean to you, to us, to the world.

I attended a charity party for the High Park Fire last summer and met Erin Mounsey. He’s a burn victim who turned his life around, and became leader of local Red Cross.

http://www.firesprinklerinitiative.org/resources/faces-of-fire/erin-mounsey.aspx

There are leaders in the world who have Asperger’s syndrome. Yes, you would be surprised. And they don’t shoot people, or dogs, or kids.

I have Asperger’s; I am just like you

By Michael Ryan, CNN
updated 5:40 AM EST, Thu December 20, 2012

Find a mentor, write and be brave, says one man who has Asperger's syndrome.
Find a mentor, write and be brave, says one man who has Asperger’s syndrome.
Ever wonder how a woman, much less and Asian woman could make it in the US Marines? Esther did.
FOR COUNTRY: I wouldn’t have changed a thing!

John lost his son Sean to suicide, and ever since has campaigned tirelessly to promote both Pieta House and the idea of talking with and supporting those who feel suicidal. Pieta House is Ireland’s first community based centre for the prevention and intervention of suicide or self-harm.

http://www.bettertogether.ie/content/john-quinn

Mr. Kinsman, who is now in his eighties, helped establish a cultural exchange in the early 1970s between black children from Mississippi and white children from Wisconsin called Project Self-Help and Awareness (PSA)

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/10/11044/food-rights-network-interviews-food-farm-hero-john-kinsman

These are the opposite of perfect, the imperfect people of everyday life that make the world a place we are proud to call our own.

I’m sure you know people like this, or may actually be one of them. Give them a hug, pat yourself on the back and keep going. You are what makes this world a better place every day. Thanks.

Milt

PS. Next week I will come back to the gun theme. You might be surprised.

 

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

40 years

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So here we are, summer winding down on the Front Range, cone flowers peaked,

 
wildflowers in the mountains a memory, and I’m coming to our 40-year Arapahoe High School reunion. Back then we’d come off a state championship in football in 1970. Unfortunately, we were far from state in the ’71 season—don’t I know. The summer of ’72 cruised in. Mark Spitz won a record seven gold medals at the summer Olympics. Then he was asked to leave the Olympics early because he was Jewish, after our first big taste of terrorism, the Munich massacre, overshadowed the games with Israeli athletes kidnapped. It only took thirty-six years for Michael Phelps to beat that record. I got fat, got white hair, my football knee doesn’t bend, and my ear hairs are out of control. Okay, not quite that bad, though it feels that way at times.

In 1972 we worried about a scholarship to college, or would we get drafted to Vietnam. Some already had a scholarship: football to Colorado University or Colorado State University; academic to Notre Dame. Some knew they would not graduate from high school. But the rest of our lives would be on us soon. We had to make plans.

What has happened to the rest of your life? Do you want to share that with others? This reunion is a way of reconnecting, completing at least one circle of life. Funny how things come around. I remember a guy, who I fist-fought in grade school, then later he was a friend and a revered teammate in high school basketball. He passed the ball to me; I passed the ball to him. Maybe I’ll see him.

Do you remember your concerns in high school? Who would go to prom with? Would your zits ever go away? Would you pass the course in history? How could you ever finish that English term paper before the end of the week?

Times were different. I took the bus to school or walked a mile through the cemetery unconcerned that a madman would hijack the bus or a pervert would kidnap me. I could even take in the latest movie, The Godfather, or Jeremiah Johnson, and not worry that a guy dressed as a mobster would come in the theater and open up with his tommy gun.

Did you need thick leather gloves to come to grips with your life then; maybe now; or the in between spots? Can you remember? Do you care to? I have a medical school classmate who does not even know his son, and will soon die of Alzheimer’s. Remembering can be a good thing.

I knew a girl in junior high, but only tangentially as the pretty locker partner of my girlfriend. In high school I dated that pretty locker partner. Then, she became my locker partner for life, my wife. We’ve been married for 36 years, had children and now a grandson. My grandson will not likely go to Arapaho High School, but, if I live another thirteen years, I will reconnect with high school ways, through him. I will see him grow through things I did, or didn’t. I hope to have more time with my grandson than with my own children. I was too busy to really enjoy their high school experience. Friends, work, make money, all those things vacuumed my time away forever.

Now we have different worries. Will the fracking going on in what used to be a free space behind my house contaminate the best-tasting water in the world? Will my daughter ever be able to buy a home since the average price of homes has gone up ten times—$27,500 in1972 to $275,000 now—and the average salary of a elementary teacher has only gone up four times from $12,200 to $50,000 a year. Will my grandson see the mountains as my son and I did when we camped in Rocky Mountain National Park?

Now beetle-kill trees, almost beautiful in the fall with their rust-colored hews offsetting the apple-green and yellow aspen, and what’s left of dark green pine trees, are ninety percent of the forest on the Western Slope. Here, just north of Fort Collins, the High Park Fire consumed over 25,000 acres, racing through beetle-killed trees and drought-crisp forests. Subsequent rains flooded the hillsides and turned the Poudre River black with soot, killed thousands of fish and destroyed entire mountains. Is there global warming?

High Park Fire made for beautiful sunsets.

What the heck am I going to do about those darn aspen trees coming up through my lawn?

But, hey, some things don’t change. We still have wars that take our children’s arm, or eye, or even worse, their mind so they can never enjoy the world in any form for the rest of their lives. Vietnam just changed names.

And, if my fourteen-year-old Labrador retriever poops in the house again . . .

Awh. Look at that face! She won’t do it again. Honest.

So, I’m going to the reunion to escape the current worries, have a great meal, get drunk and . . . okay, not really. I want to reconnect to a time of less intensity, when you had time to think without a tweet or cellphone bleep interrupting your thoughts. Or, maybe I want to at least put those times in perspective. They were different, and in some ways much more joyful, easier, simpler. Though, at the time, those pimples and getting that certain girl to notice me seemed pretty damn serious. For God’s sake I might have never had a family. I could have been a lonely bachelor and lived as a hermit in a time machine like Dr. Who. Hmm.

I’d like to see you, talk with you, find out where your life has gone, what has happened with you, discuss and laugh at the old times and perhaps share your current hopes and dreams over a pint of Easy Street beer, or a wee dram of Glen Morangie Scotch, or maybe just a Diet Coke. All these things are what make life interesting and what make us human beings. Our social nature cannot be denied. We learn lessons from others, and who knows, others might learn from us. The collective will grow.

So give in. Have fun. Reconnect.

The summer of our life, just like the cone flowers, will eventually wilt and turn brown; the stems weaken, the petals fall. At the 50-year reunion things will look much different, if I’m even around. I might be sucking Ensure through a straw wondering when the next morphine dose will come.

But for now, the flowers are still blooming and my grandson is a joy.

I hope you have joy. I also hope to see you at the reunion.

 

Milt Mays

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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Contact me at www.miltmays@gmail.com