Steve Jobs in the Sky

The Fire We Dodged, Almost

This is a picture taken from my back yard on June 1, 2011.   We are looking at a plume of heat and smoke from the approaching Wallow Fire.  At this point the fire was about 2 miles away.  We know now that the fire started when a pair of campers left their camp and their fire, to hike into the forest.  That camp fire eventually burned over a half million acres of forest, destroying 32 homes, four businesses, and 36 other buildings.  The blaze cost more than $79 million to extinguish.

Alpine was evacuated for about three weeks.  During that time the Alpine Fire Department worked night and day and with the help of some municipal fire crews from other parts of the country managed to deal with the burning embers that continued to threaten homes.  Without that effort the loss of homes would have been over a hundred.

During much of the evacuation time Alpine was without electricity.  That meant that refrigerators and freezers stopped working and residents were not able to get back to empty them.  Residents returned to refrigerators and freezers full of rotting and stinking food and meat.  The food was discarded but there is no way to remove the stink from the appliances.  So a resident could easily loose several hundred dollars worth of food and be faced with replacing appliances with prices easily ranging from $500 for a stand alone freezer to $1200 and up for refrigerators.  Add to that the loss of income during the evacuation, and the cost of living away from home for  three weeks.

Environmentalists have worked hard to pass legislation to keep loggers out of the forest and to limit travel in the forest.  Part of the motivation being to protect endangered species, like the spotted owl.  In the end about half of the spotted owl nesting sites were destroyed by the fire.  Had the forest been thinned by logging much of the fuel that made this fire almost impossible to control might have been removed.  That in itself may not have prevented the fire, but it certainly would have made it easier to contain.  It's about time for bringing common sense to forest management, and to protecting endangered species and their habitat
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River Walk

The San Francisco River flows down out of the mountains, past my house (actually about a mile from my house), meanders into one end of Luna Lake, and out the other on its way down into New Mexico.  In our neck of the woods once the winter melt is over the river is quiet and narrow enough to step across in places.  It runs through its own little valley making it a great refuge from the winds that blow on the mountain and a neat place for a short hike.  Here's a view from the trail along the river.

West Wind on Luna Lake

Gorgeous day in Alpine AZ.  Wind finally gives in a bit after 2 or more months of 30 to 40 mph gusts.  Sunny and warm today.  Temperature made it to low seventies.  Good day to cruise about on the ranger and take some pictures.  This one taken with my new iPhone.  And yes on a day I call calm there is a wind strong enough to crank up this little chop on the lake.

West Texas Images - Take 5 minutes and enjoy

People send me stuff from the internet.  Most of it is mildly entertaining but I rarely forward anything.  Here is one I could not resist.  Great, great pictures of some of the dwindling really wild land in this country.


Wyman Meinzer's West Texas from Wyman Meinzer on Vimeo.

Time Out in Tucson

This is the view from Teena's dinning room in Tucson.  Several times a year Sarah and I escape from the mountains to spend a few days here.  Never disappointed.

Would enjoy living here year round.  So different in contrast from our little isolated mountain town.

Luna Lake

EMT training is over. Monstrous, fearsome tests are passed and it's time to focus on writing, blogging and other activities that have been ignored for months.

Here is Luna Lake, late afternoon yesterday. Picture taken with new compact point and shoot camera. Samsung, TL110. 14 mega pixels 5X zoom.  (Click on the picture for a bigger view.)

Bought a Nook, the Barnes and Noble ebook reader and like it very much. Have had great fun reading Tim Hallinan's Poke Rafferty thriller series set in Bankock. And have exchanged a couple of short emails with the author. More about Poke Rafferty later.