FourMile fire
The mountainside beyond this one escaped the fire

Last Labor Day, the mountains west of Boulder were set ablaze by a fellow who didn’t keep a close eye on an outdoor firepit (a volunteer fire fighter, no less). Called the FourMile Canyon Fire, it destroyed 166 homes and burned 6500 acres. Luckily, nobody was killed.

 

Today I spent the day up FourMile Canyon with a hundred other volunteers. We were there to seed a section of the area with grass to keep it from eroding. It was a fantastic day of people giving back to the mountain and the forest, showing our love for the Rockies. It was hard work – cold and windy in the morning; dusty and sooty in the afternoon. Some people threw seeds, the rest of us raked the seeds into the dirt.

The team leaders were young members of AmeriCorps. One of them, Vinny, was a twenty-something man who just got his degree in finance. Instead of heading for Wall Street, he decided to spend a year in AmeriCorps. Another team leader was 18-year-old Scott from New York City. Before coming to Colorado to spend two months working in the FourMile burn area, their team was in New Orleans.

These young people are smart, inquisitive, and dedicated. They get paid about $11 a day, plus room and board. They give me hope for the future. They also aren’t sure if they’re going to be finishing up their stints since the proposed House GOP budget completely eliminates AmeriCorps. However, according to Vinny, Obama’s budget increases funding for the group. Hopefully, the reliably short-sighted Republicans will lose this battle.

One particularly pleasant part of the day came when our congressman, Jared Polis, showed up. Polis is a hard-working, openly-gay, liberal democrat who cares a lot about environmental issues and who went to bat for the Public Option during the HCR debate. I’m quite proud to have him as my congressman. A friend and I got to chat with him and he hammed it up a bit for our cameras. I am very pleased to say I managed to get in a jab at the Huffington Post. I thanked him for his work on behalf of the Public Option and told him I now had insurance because of the democrats’ work on HCR. We asked him how he liked living in D.C. and dealing with all the Republicans in the House. He was very diplomatic in his response and mentioned that he gets on the elevator every day with a certain wild-eyed congresswoman (my words, not his).

Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the day – and something that made me think of our friends in Japan — was that, here and there, through all the chunks of burnt trees and bushes, and all the grime and soot, we spotted tiny wildflowers making their way up into the sun.

FourMile Fire
Burnt out tree
Burnt out stump
Seeding FourMile Canyon burn area
Some of the "seeding" crew takes a break
Jared Polis
Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colo) obligingly plays "American Gothic" for us

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ADONAI
Member

What a great way to spend a day, e-cat! That Polis guy seems like a real cool dude. Don’t see too many politicians actually working with their constituents on something important to them.

I love the forest myself. I never had to walk far growing up to be surrounded by the beauty of nature. We have had several fires in our time,and like the firemen there, ours watched for people and structures but let nature take its course.

It’s a great time for forest lovers. There are more trees and forest area on Earth right now than at any other time in known history. National and international laws for logging companies require them by law to replace every tree they bring down. The best thing you can do for the Earth is pass up that plastic and get paper. Help plant some new trees.

bito
Member

AD, tree farms are not forests. Logging companies do not replant mixed forests, they plant the next harvest.

ADONAI
Member

bito, My bad. Thought they were in a forest. Well, it appears there are still some areas that require a more personal touch 🙂

KQµårk 死神
Member

True but it’s much better to get lumber from tree farms than from virgin forest land. All industries are not equal either the logging industry is the big culprit when it comes to clear cutting and not replanting trees. The pulp and paper industry is much more responsible in the way it uses trees like a crop to be replanted and the industry plants far more trees than it cuts down. Not to mention due to the difference in final products lumber versus pulp and paper, the paper industry recycles more and more which again lets them use less and less virgin fiber sources.

My biggest problem with the pulp and paper industry has always been it’s contribution to water and air pollution.

We talk allot about how burning coal is a huge source of CO2 but pulp mills burn one of their manufacturing by products called lignin which is actually worse than burning coal. In one respect burning lignin is a good thing because they are burning a product that would enter the waste stream and generate up to 60% of their own electrical power but on the other hand it’s and extremely dirty substance to burn because it has far more Sulfur in it than coal, hence the awful smell near pulp mills.

Obviously the long term answer is already being addressed and the paper products we use today are from over 53% recycled fiber and astoundingly 77% of packaging we use is made of recycled paper. In many ways the pulp and paper industry should be used as a model for the way we can make an old dirty industry cleaner and more sustainable.

bito
Member

Oh KQ, I wold never argue with you about the pulp & paper industry, you know more than I ever will. 😉 My point, poorly made, was mixed forests support a very diverse amount of life and quite often when they are logged they are replanted with cultured S-P-F (spruce-pine-fir) for the next harvest. SPF tends to acidify the soil and discourage any any many types of other plants. Much of the native flora and fauna is lost. I have seen, walked and logged in many of tree farms and forests. There is a difference. Many of the tree farms in the south are/were planted on fallow fields and I have no problem with that at all. Hell, I was a carpenter, I needed those 2X4’s, but I didn’t like them going into the swamps in Florida to cut down Cypress to make mulch.

KQµårk 死神
Member

Your point was valid and I understood what you meant. I was trying to expound on it from the pulp and paper perspective. You are right in a way the South does do it “right” where they use the loblolly pine as a crop.

I would not venture into your expertize about flora and fauna and lumber products either because you know much more than I.

I think the West coast is a particular problem because they still do tree “mining” and I’m sure you know that is the most devastating practice. Anyone who has flown into the Portland airport can see that.

Cypress swamps are just incredible. I had the unique privilege of going on an air-boat ride after a series of heavy rains and saw parts of cypress swamps people seldom see. They really are enchanted forests.

KQµårk 死神
Member

Thanks for sharing an inspiring story.

I hope this generation coming up and newer generations are the answer. For the life of me I don’t know how the peace and love generation of the 60’s and 70’s turned out to be the same generation that identifies itself as being conservative to liberal 2 to 1.

KillgoreTrout
Member

KQ, a relentless demonization of the counter culture by conservatives.
Plus many people became disenchanted with the counter culture because many of the, “new ways,” didn’t really work out, because some of the alternative ways of living were too lofty to actually put into practice.
But far too many people gave up too soon, and many of them allowed the right to demonize counter culture ideals.

Khirad
Member

And many of them were really genuine in the first place, or just being fashionable.

KillgoreTrout
Member

Flower Children were the fashionable ones. Many people don’t make a distinction between genuine Hippies and Flower Children.
The Diggers in San Fran were the original Hippies and the majority of them were intelligent, college educated people who were fed up with the society of the 50s and before. They saw how many of society’s ways were detrimental. There was a popular poster back then that read, “Like Father, Like Son, Like Hell!”

Khirad
Member

Exactly. That’s the distinction (from what I hear – I don’t have any first-hand observations to draw from, of course).

KillgoreTrout
Member

Khirad, once the US media got hold of the Hippies, it was the beginning of the end for the counter culture. It was the media and advertisers that created the Flower Children.

Pepe Lepew
Member

That reminds me very much of hiking through Glacier several years ago, the summer after a huge forest fire. There was absolutely no shade and for about four miles, you hike through this burnt-out trees.

I hiked that same trail a couple of years later, and there was thick bushy underbrush, a lot of huckleberries and salmonberry bushes. Then I hiked it a couple of years later and it was like hiking through a head-high jungle. The growth had become incredibly lush. It was so thick that we literally damn near walked right on top of a black bear. You couldn’t see him until it was too late (fortunately, he scurried off … and more fortunately, it wasn’t a grizzly.).

Doing that you realize how much wildfire is really part of the natural ecosystem. The Forest Service figured that out about 10 years ago, and now they let forest fires burn, especially if they are lightning-caused and aren’t threatening people or structures. It drives the old-timers crazy, but fire is part of nature.

choicelady
Member

What wonderful work, and then wonderful words, e-cat! Thank you for the restoration work. I know fire is important to forest renewal, but this fire was not “natural” so it’s right to have human intervention to help anchor the floor and let the renewal begin. How cool your Congressman was there, too! Thank you for this hopeful story of nature and human nurture all rolled into one.

Questinia
Member

What kind of grass seed?

Truth
Member

Escribacat, thank you so much for sharing this with us the way you did. Lovely, excellent, perfect, thanks!

kesmarn
Admin

e’cat, what a bright spot in the midst of a lot of less-than-happy news over the last couple of weeks.

Your congressman looks like a wonderful guy. Hang on to that one; he’s a keeper!

Thanks to you and the AmeriCorps gang for a real contribution to the future of a beautiful area. And I ardently hope the GOP doesn’t succeed in killing off such a terrific program.

whatsthatsound
Member

Really nice read, e-cat! I’m glad to read about AmeriCorps and would love for it to become a fixture.
Nice pictures, too!

Orcas Island
Guest
Orcas Island

escribacat- great story. Enjoyed the photos.

AlphaBitch
Member
AlphaBitch

Thanks, e’cat. I appreciate your work, and your reporting – on both the environmental recovery and on the hope expressed by the young Americorps workers.

Still hoping to get out there this spring; still on for Santa Fe at end of April. Everything else up in the air at present, but soon I hope. I’ll shoot you an email.
-AB