The fire is dying down

The Monument Fire's current size: 29,746 acres. Containment: 64%, according to inciweb.org about 30 minutes ago.

Last night was the first night I could not see any fires burning off the peaks. Whatever is burning is further north and deeper into the range. The mountains are returning to normal and more people are moving back into their homes. Only our Mexican neighbor across the street, the one with the four mutant Chihuahuas, has not yet come back.

The house still smells like a camp fire. This morning at sunrise I trimmed the rest of the oleander. Kevin took three loads of debris to the transfer station. At 10am there was another flash mob off Highway 92 of around 35 people, young and old, holding thank-you signs and waving at passing fire fighter trucks, sheriff cars, etc. Some even honked back and a few of the bigger fire trucks even blew their sirens.

Everyone seems to be gotten back to normal. The dogs seem fine, even the cats. Only Sara seems to have trouble breathing at times, and hopefully it's just due to the triple-digit heat we have been having lately.

I spotted a green patch of aspen groves near Carr Peak this morning, so all is not lost. Let the healing begin!

The Monument Fire

The fire that started on the border (allegedly by drug runners trying to keep the persuing USBP agents away) has now spread to a potentially 6500 acres with 24 homes lost in Ash Canyon yesterday during a massive flare-up.

And just like an Apocalyptic comment I made in my last post, I am pre-packing for evacuation. The fire must reach Miller Canyon for us to be affected and that's only a miles from the current fire. I will take the dogs in the van. The cats are in the garage so that I can get to them quickly.

This all is so unbelievable.

http://www.svherald.com/content/news/2011/06/15/fire-forces-more-flee

Carr Peak in June

Since this was the absolute last time I could attempt Carr Peak this month before the Coronado National Forest shut all its trails at noon today, I had to get up early. I got no other offers to hike with me at 5:30am (it was more like 5:45am by the time I got to the Lower Carr Canyon Road parking lot) so it was just Sadie and me and the early morning breeze.

And, I must admit, I liked it! Although I packed a windbreaker, I never needed it. I also didn't need to stop for water as often as I would have had I started later. We didn't drink water until we made it to the peak at 7:45am

We started at 6:06am. We were the only people anywhere. The Ramsey Overlook campsite was deserted and the parking lot was empty, nor where there any people anywhere along the drive up the mountain. It felt creepy and for a brief moment I felt perhaps this morning hike was a bad idea.

But it wasn't. Although the wildfire smoke from the Chiricahuas was very obvious (as well as smoke from a fire in Cananea, Sonora), there were many birds flitting about and I was serenaded with chirps, tweets, caws, coos, and hums. I need to do these early hikes more often!

And there was plenty of flora blooming. Purple lilac, red cardinal flowers, yellow flowers and a few other unknown flowers dotted the trails. I spotted a beautiful Swallowtail and a few other butterflies. Where all these here all this time and I just never noticed?

It took me 1:40hours to get to the stop. This was a slow hike for me, but I was stopping a lot to photograph so much, as if I were never going to see this beautiful landscape again.

I felt like I was paying homage to a threatened mountain range, after we have lost the most precious sites within the Chiricahuas and White Mountains from all our current fires.

Sadie was a sweetheart and stayed by my side the whole time. She did her share of sniffing the flowers and other scents, but she never wandered far. She was probably wondering why I was taking so long, or why I kept stopping along the way.

When we got to the top, though, she was a lovebug. Initially she kept her distance from me, but once I set up the camera she was by my side, licking my mouth when she could or trying to cuddle with me. She isn't normally this demonstrative!

We stayed on top no more than 15 minutes, just enough time to drink water and for me to have an apricot. I enjoyed the breeze on the peak, but as I sat there I wondered how much more wildlife will die in our fires, and how much more wilderness will be destroyed. Arizona is losing so much of its natural beauty this spring (and the fire season in young!) that when this is all over with we won't have much else left to enjoy.

I figured the hike down would be faster since we were going downhill, but I was stopping just as often to photograph butterflies and birds. I noticed a pretty brown-orange wren-like bird several times, and one seemed to enjoy posing for me.

We never came across another person the entire time. We got back to the van at 9:45am and made it down to the lower parking lot just as the 10am news on NPR came on. Another fifteen minutes I was back home, feeling satisfied that I got this hike out of the way so early, with so much left of the day to do.

I really do need to do these early hikes more often.

Hunter Canyon (for the last time this month)

The Coronado National Forest will be closing all its areas effective tomorrow due to the high fire risks. I decided on taking all three dogs there one last time for the usual 3-mile loop. I don't usually wait until just before sunset to do this, but with Kevin back from Phoenix I wanted to chat a bit with him before going on my evening walk.

The dogs enjoyed their romp in the cool early evening air.

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There was a new sign at the trailhead: FIRE DANGER EXTREME. Another letter posted at the forest sign reminded people that no shooting was allowed under the fire restrictions. This was no larger than a standard office letter and drivers couldn't see that from their vehicle. Neither sign has been here before.

Usually the only people I see in this place are target shooters and USBP agents and a few illegals scammering into the high shrubs, but today I met a young man who was collecting caterpillars, the ursine giant skipper (Megathymus ursus) that tend to be seen around here in July. They are mostly brownish-black with their upper wings tipped in a dull orange-yellow.

He was parked off the road with his hatchback open. I thought he had car trouble, but he was just putting away his gear and getting ready to drive back to Tucson. He seemed very passionate about the butterflies, telling me of their wide black-and-orange wings and that they fly around "zipping at 60mph." He also seemed to know about all kinds of wildlife here in southern Arizona. But he was not a trained biologist. He was more like me, an amateur naturalist.

I could have chatted more with him, but it was already 7:10pm and daylight was running low. I don't like to be in the canyons this late, especially when illegals are known to pop up after dark.

It was nice to see the different colors of the canyon this late in the day. A blooming yucca had its white blooms open, several birds twittered around, and a few other weird sounds were audible tonight.

I made it back to the house by 8pm. We don't know when the forests will re-open. Did the Coronado National Forest do the right thing? Perhaps they should have targeted the campers first, as they tend to start careless fires like the one in Bear Wallow up north (a fire in which the mens' two dogs were allegedly tied up to trees while they went day hiking!)

The closure is an inconvenience but I also see why it's necessary. I've seen too many careless and destructive people in these forests who think it's their right to do as they please. For me the closures mean no easy work-out with Sadie, no touch with nature and driving elsewhere. But where? Around here the only recreational trails are in the national forest. The only other options are the trails around Bisbee, or the San Pedro trail, but so many are vandalized by illegals with their trash and careless use getting to where they want to go.

The fires across the state are not getting any better. The big Wallow Fire allegedly has now encased the pretty resort village of Greer. The ecacuations of Eagar and Springerville are now mandatory and the fire's last reported size is 389,000 acres. I think it's going to surpass Arizona's largest wildfire to date, the Rodeo-Chedeski fire of 2002. The Murphy fire is at 67,525 acres and the Horseshoe2 fire is at 116,264 acres.

There are now also new fires near Flagstaff which sound like they were purposefully set.

The Chiricahuas are burning