It Could Have Been Us

El Valle spent two days on the Ready list for the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. The evacuation protocol goes like this; Ready, think about what you want to get out of your house if you have to leave; Set, put your papers, electronics, photo albums, and animal kennels if you have them by the door or in the car and be ready to Go, which means, get the hell out of Dodge. Then a cold front moved in, it snowed on the mountain peaks, and a few drops of rain fell in the valleys. The Taos County Sheriff took us off the Ready list and put the neighboring villages closer to the fire on Set instead of Go (through the grapevine I heard that not many of them had heeded “Go” and left).

We dodged (small “d” this time) the bullet this time but it could just as easily been us, on the west side of the Sangre de Cristos instead of the east side in Mora and Guadalupita and Rociada and Chacon. Our ranger district could have lit a prescribed burn in the very forest restoration project I’ve been working on for three years. Someone could have let a campfire get out of hand up in Las Trampas or Santa Barbara Canyon. Someone else could have thrown a cigarette out the window onto dry roadside grass.

I’m living in a tinderbox. New Mexicans have a habit of saying, “Well, we’re pretty lucky here in the Land of Enchantment. We don’t get hurricanes or tornados (maybe a couple of small ones), we don’t have volcanoes that erupt or heat waves that kill or sub-zero temperatures that freeze us to death (only occasionally). Now we have to admit that we live in a drought plagued-water bereft environment that could go up in smoke at any minute. It just did for thousands of people who lost their homes, vehicles, animals (lots of cows and horses on all those Mora Valley ranches), garages, sheds, and forests.

They’re my forests, too. The fire barely crossed the east/west divide and got close to Serpent Lake, one of the most beautiful places in the Pecos Wilderness. I’ve hiked and backpacked there many times, the quickest access to the divide between the Rio Pueblo and Pecos River watersheds and Jicarita Peak, that big bowl shaped mountain that sits above Peñasco. Mark and I hiked to the divide via the Serpent Lake Trail many times—the lake lies in a bowl just below the trail—when the kids were young with other families with young kids. We hiked there without kids when we were older and climbed the peak. We hiked there with Sammy, our deaf dog who couldn’t hear us call him to come back when the wind was blowing like a motherfucker and we wanted to turn back. I took my hiking class from UNM Continuing Education on a backpack trip to the lake where we camped and later bushwhacked our way straight up the ridge to the peak because there was too much snow on the trail. I backpacked there with Terri and Emma and a friend from Philly on their first backpack trip anywhere.From what’s been reported, the fire burned just to the east of Serpent Lake in the Angostura and Alamitos watersheds. I’ve hiked and skied there, too. Those forests are probably gone, although miraculously, the cabins tucked away alongside the Angostura Trail survived, from what I’ve heard. Every time we passed by on our way up the trail I’d think, “Well, I hope a fire never goes through here cuz these cabins will be toast.”

I’m waiting awhile to drive up to see for myself the tragic consequences. Fire fighters are still everywhere, although most of the roads into the Mora Valley are open once again. The south end of the fire also reached into the Pecos Wilderness, near Elk Mountain and remains active. So when most of the crews are released I’ll leave Santa Fe—my next post is why I’m suddenly living in Santa Fe after 30 years in El Valle—and follow I-25 north to Las Vegas where I’ll pick up SH 518, which leads to Mora. At Sapello, I’ll turn off onto 94 that travels through many of the little villages that were devastated by the fire. Maybe I’ll go all the way to Rociada and Pendaries, the villages closest to that east side of the Pecos Wilderness that I’m less familiar with. Then I’ll return to 518 through Mora and Holman and Cleveland to Chacon, a village tucked away at the base of the mountains that were completely burned (miraculously, much of Chacon was saved). Returning to 518 I’ll climb Holman Hill, which divides the Rio Pueblo from the Rio Mora and leads to Angostura and Alamitos. Maybe I’ll drive up Forest Road 161 to the Serpent Lake trailhead, if it’s open (the Carson and Santa Fe forests are in Stage 3 restrictions, meaning completely closed to the public).

Do I really want to do this? Maybe not, but I feel compelled to see what happened. I’m too old to climb Jicarita anymore but I’m not too old to bear witness, even if it’s from a car. As I said before, it could have been us.