Too Close for Comfort

On Monday morning, June 25, we looked out our window and saw what seemed to be a bonfire across the mesa to our west. By mid-afternoon, the bonfire had grown to a huge plume of smoke. Around 6:00 p.m., we noticed small planes flying in and out of the smoke, and through our binoculars, we could see licks of flame spreading toward a large adobe structure. As we headed out to the OBL for dinner later that evening, the smoke seemed to lessen, and by the time we returned home we saw no traces of smoke or fire. It was a huge relief to wake up on Tuesday morning and see that the fire had been contained, or so we thought.

On Tuesday afternoon, smoke was rising again and by 6:00 the fire was nearly as bad as it had been the day before, due to the high winds that blew from the west that afternoon. As the crow flies, this fire was only about 5 miles from our house. Even though the Rio Grande Gorge lies between our house and the fire, we still felt the fear that grips people in hot, dry areas during the summer. Could our little mesa community be next? Would we be able to evacuate in time if a fire started during the night? Only a few days before, we'd been saying that the fire danger must be very low this year because of all the rain. But we forgot that rain promotes the growth of grass, which easily turns to tinder when the weather turns dry.

By this morning (Thursday) the fire had been contained, but not before destroying 440 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. Fortunately no one was injured and no homes were burned--just lots of sagebrush, grass, and junipers. It turns out that the culprit was a lightning bolt that struck the Double D Ranch, which is about 5 miles west of the Gorge Bridge; the fire spread from there to the BLM land. Everyone in Taos is hoping that this is the one and only wildfire of the season.