April 5 Running Through the Fire Zone

Ah, sadness when I see this.  

April 5:  32 degrees at 7am, reached about  60 mid-day. Windy, really windy.  These spring winds dry things out and really bring on the fire danger.  Spring in these mountains is dry, dusty, and windy.  

Our errands today took us to town, and while there, we did a 10 mile loop , all of which was in the area hit quite hard by the Cerro Grande fire in 2000, and some of which was burned again in the Las Conchas fire of 2010.  This whole area used to be a lush green forest, with 150 foot tall Douglas Firs, Aspen, Pine, Spruce, and a green understory.

This photo was in my file, from some government website, but I don't have the link anymore to give credit.

  The Cerro Grande fire was man made, when a (not-so) controlled burn by the Forest Service got out of hand, and burned a huge area, including many, many homes in Los Alamos.  The Forest Service doesn't call them "controlled burns" any more.  They are now referred to as "prescribed burns".  

As you can see, even after 13 years, there's not a whole heck of alot of growth.  

 I read somewhere an estimate that it would take 400 years for this forest to return to it's previous state.  And that some areas will never return due to climate change.   So, in my previous post when I said we must have the long view in regards to recovery and change, I really meant LONG view.

 This is the "Keyhole", which is located on that ridge in the above photo.  There is a trail of sorts to scramble up to it, but, for some reason, we have never gone up there.  Probably because we are always on our way to somewhere else, and don't want to take the extra hour to get up to this. But its cool, no?  This is zoomed way close, obviously.

Just a few trees escaped the fire.

Life!  Undaunted by the arid, inhospitable environment, this 
beautiful little wild flower amazed me.  I haven't been able to identify it yet. It looks like some kind of crocus.  But here? In this dry pumice gravel?
A little further down the trail, there was a small cluster of them.
Nature is so full of surprises.  Bloom where you are planted!

Job 14:7

For there is hope for a tree, when it is cut down, that it will sprout again. And its shoots will not fail.