smoke gets in your eyes or the new normal

As I came over Trout Creek Pass into the Arkansas Valley, I could see the smoke gathering in the southern part of the valley around Salida. Smoke got thicker as I came further south, over Poncha Pass, and down into the San Luis Valley.

The West Fork complex fire (a combination of three fires) was burning up Wolff Creek Pass...burning at this point some 60,000 plus acres of dead, dead pine beetle killed forest...about 80 miles to the southwest. As the prevailing winds blow toward this end of the valley, it is a smokey time at the hot springs where I came for the weekend.

I guess this is the new normal. Summer means forest fires in the Rockies...not just in Colorado but all through the west. Another fire burns just west of here in Saguache. And others go off around the region.

So, what to do? Well the smoke often embellishes the sunsets...that is an upside.




But it will take years, perhaps decades, to clear out these dead forests. Travel in the summer in the mountains needs to be flexible...one has to be able to choose a spot to camp but be willing to move ( quickly if necessary) to another town or forest. Not a good time to plant oneself down to a
"permanent first or second home" in these hills. Better to be here in the winter when the snow storms can be predicted with greater precision that where a spot fire may land from a wider conflagration.

How quickly this symptom of climate change has occurred. How quickly we have to adjust. How slowly our governments and ways of thinking make change. We will, however, move along...plod along...perhaps at the pace that earlier homo sapiens set out some 200,000 years ago to spread across the continents.

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Biked this afternoon to Roger Williams Park, a few blocks from Ingrid's place. Hot and humid...but also very green. No need for underground sprinkler systems in this climate...the ground is muddy from last night's rain.





The parkland was donated to Providence in 1871 by the great-great-great granddaughter of Roger Williams. Betsy Williams was the last descendent to own the property, the final part of the land which Roger purchased from the chief of the Narragansett tribe in 1638. For which he had been severely criticized by other settlers who believed the land should be taken from these "rude unChristian savages." But then Williams who first postulated the separation of religion and government and who welcomed all settlers to this colony, Quakers, Jews, Baptists, was a man of strong conviction.

I bike past a cemetery to get to the park...lots more cemeteries in Rhode Island than in Colorado but then people lived and died here for two hundred years longer...





The road curves down past a statue...placed in remembrance of a 19th century businessman by his grandson...but what is the story here? Some sort of allegory but hard to figure out exactly what....





Then the road curves down by one of the seven lakes that make up the park's 480 acres.





Then life intrudes...coming around a corner...a burnt out car, two young women somewhat shaken, an officer calling in the incident. Apparently the car caught on fire rounding that same curve just a bit before I did...




Then back through along the road, through some of the forested areas (the park was designed by a landscape architect in the 1880s...around the time of Central Park...when cities felt the need to "open the lungs of the city to Nature")...




And then in the distance a white marble temple...reminded me of the aesthetic ideal of the great lawns of English homes which probably inspired this scene...





And people using the temple to frame their own lives, their own stories....





While around the lake others are more concerned with more prosaic concerns...like fish.




And, then, biking home....with a stop to pick up some additional items for dinner...like littlenecks with corn and chorizo...from the Edgewood Cafe.





Good ride for a late weekend afternoon.

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Location:Afternoon in the park