not careful, I’ll lose my constituency. I have to play it smart, politically. If I don’t have people and money behind me, what good is my support?”
“Your support is important. This is a complex subject. You understand it. Believe me, they’ll figure Harold Grimmsley out. It’s obvious.”
“No, Jack, it isn’t. Even though…and you’re right…even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” She searched for her next words. “I don’t know what we’ll do next, but I promise you, I’ll work on him. I’ll educate him.”
“What does that mean? Are you telling me you’re going fight us?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. I’m sure you’re right, that others will see he’s in a different league. I just need to lie low for a while.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of this one bit.
CHAPTER 7
Jack began his Monday morning early, to give himself time to get to the plateau and get reacquainted with the burn project before the arrival of the fire crew. This, he was sure, would be a glorious week—deep blue skies and the first signs of autumn in the high country.
He threw some gear into the pickup, hoping to camp over this evening. Later in the week there might not be the chance—the Chamber of Commerce meeting was on Wednesday. The trip he had in mind was one he could easily do at the end of the day, and one he had taken a year before, into an off-trail area he stumbled onto while trying to avoid all contact with people.
He turned onto the main road. Beyond the mouth of the canyon he could see the first hint of morning, a glow behind the mountains above Las Piedras. Lights began to flicker on across the village, as it slowly roused itself to life. No smoke rose from the chimneys—too warm. There were no signs of fall, at least not here in the canyons. It might be different in the high country.
He glanced at the briefcase on the seat beside him. “Who are you kidding?” he mumbled to himself. There was no way he’d get to the things that had accumulated in his inbox. Not on a day in the field. Too bad other things were demanding his attention. He would have to turn to other priorities once he was sure the crew wouldn’t take out the old snags, or too many trees, or build their burn piles too close to the big trees, or do something excessive that might affect wildlife habitat.
He remembered Karen Hatcher and what she told him, that she would have to ‘cool her support for the project.’ The environmental community could make it difficult if they chose, but the project was half finished. With a good month of work—if they had that before the first snows—the thinning would be completed and the plot could be burned next year. Then, the Park Service could point to a restored ‘classic’ example of open ponderosa pine and grassland savanna. That would make it easier for Karen Hatcher to champion future projects. She could say, ‘I told you so,’ to her board of directors, and to Harold Grimmsley.
Let’s hope it’s that easy.
He was a little worried for her, but she was a big girl. She could take care of herself.
He turned onto the Terrace Road, and toward the plateau. A little way out of town, the sun peeked over the mountains and lit a thousand feet of rocky ledges, and the switchbacks working their way down, roughly following Caveras Creek from its headwaters somewhere in the park. He drove past several old ranches before the canyon narrowed, forcing the road out of the drainage and up onto a series of intermediate mesas. He passed one more ranch before climbing onto the plateau, and into the park. Slowing, he looked out over the region—San Juan Mountains to the east, and mesas, canyons and high desert to the south and west. Breath-taking.
He sped up, but slowed again in a grove of aspen. He had expected their leaves to be turned or turning, but they were green. No sign of change—surprising.
He came to the project site, and drove past the first few piles of brush. The limbs cut last fall and spring were now red and dry. They’d burn well, but they’ll have to wait. He parked and dug his canvas cruiser vest out from behind the seat, and checked to see that all the tools he would need—pens, pencils, paper, plastic flagging, compass, and map—were there in the pockets, front and back.
He took off along the edge of the project. More than three hundred acres in size, it was situated along the boundary of the national park, on a block of land that ran east to west, and then jogged north through a particularly dense piece of forest, sheltered by a slight north-facing slope. He avoided the east to west run—most of which was finished—and headed north, where no work had been done.
He crept through the dog-hair thickets and downed logs, thinking about what needed to be accomplished. The prescription wasn’t particularly complex, but it could be made to sound that way, especially when reduced to numbers. There were numbers for tons per acre of various sizes of fuels—from grasses and pine needles to downed tree limbs and trunks. Numbers for density of trees, numbers to characterize the size of gaps in the canopy, and ultimately—once restoration was complete and fire could be allowed to resume its role in the ecosystem—numbers related to fire severity, and the years between fires to simulate the natural system. It could sound very complex, but the simplicity of it settled over him as he waded through a thicket of young skinny pines and Gamble oak—ladders that could carry a fire into the canopies of the older trees. “Most of these have to go,” he said to himself.
It would take both chainsaws and burning to do the job. Anything shy of that combination and the work would not be complete. Not with the amount of change that had occurred here. “Hell of a thing to do,” he said, thinking about the years of fire suppression.
He came to a road. This was the northern limit of the burn block. He turned back.
The crew was there when he arrived at the truck. Some were pulling tools from the bed of the crew-cab pickup they lovingly called their “6-pack.”
“Good morning,” he shouted.
“Mornin, Jack,” Reger said. “I was just about to tell everyone here how Cristy saved my ass on that fire in California.” He was trying to look serious.
Jack looked over at Cristy. She was bracing herself to be the butt of a joke.
“Yeah,” Johnny continued. “It was so big. Fire camp that is. I never would have found the mess tent if not for Cristy. All you had to say was dinner and she plowed through whole crews of hotshots on the way to the chow line. All I had to do was follow. I’d a never made it.”
“Didn’t y’all have a fire to fight?” a young firefighter asked. Jack didn’t know his name, but he sounded like a Texan.
“Fire? Yeah, we did a little firefighting, didn’t we Cristy? But mostly, we just enjoyed the California lifestyle. They stopped the fire every day at three for yoga lessons.”
“Right,” Cristy said. “A real vacation.”
Jack let them go about their little rituals. As chainsaws were being fueled and maintained, he pulled out a can of spray paint and started marking small trees.
The crew was soon following. After trees were felled, they were limbed and bucked, and put into piles the size of a Volkswagen bug, and no larger. This would assure that the eventual fires would burn with only moderate intensity.
The crew fell behind, but Jack didn’t expect them to keep up. Theirs was the harder task. He cruised on ahead,
