Ah, so that’s what i am, a Cheerleader

I’ve discovered it meeting travelers in hostels. Mostly young. Nicolas works in Mexico City, transferred from Columbia. In a year he’s made a lot of friends and improved at work,  a financial center. I congratulated him on taking a chance, leaving friends and family. And that’s the way i feel about most of the people I’ve met. Zack taught two years in Korea and about to return to japan to do the same. Alicia, from Brazil, loves to skin dive and her go-pro! Alberto working as a gardner in Australia but a business graduate from Chile, about to go see what all the demonstrations there are all about.

The list goes on. Allen a 74 year old linguist from Belgium who has rented a studio here in Guadalajara, 150 a month. Great find. I run into him for coffee. He’s taught in Greece and other countries. His objective to improve his Spanish and to live on a meager pension. He’s interesting as long as we stay away from religion and politics. He’s very, very conservative. For him Obama represented Satanism! For the first time i could understand how twisted a Christian could be. 

Others met briefly and in parting. That’s problem with travel. I meet people i like and then they’re gone. It’s making me homesick, to see the same people everyday, to walk the same streets and see the weather change. In  very practical way this is crazy. In chico it’s raining like crazy and cold as hell. Here in Guanajuato the nights are cold but the days sunny and warm. I have realized my ideal is A COLLEGE TOWN.  No wonder I’ve lived in same small city so long, where my life circles around the university: classes, concerts, demonstrations, lectures, visiting artists and public figures. I also encourage students to adventure. 

And I’m always posting things on facebook i think people will enjoy and or learn from. And my friends must be exhausted by all the stuff i send them to encourage them to grow, learn, be delighted by. I suppose i should have been a career counselor. If only i could suffer the constraints of a regular job lightly. The first psychic i went to.  Gloria, and subsequent advisors, reading my past lives said I’d had so much responsibility in the past, blowing up Atlantis for example, this life supposed to be dedicated to fun. Unfortunately as Baudelaire said, “Work is more fun than fun.” A lot of truth in that. I delight in all the jobs these travelers have. Next lifetime: a career!

Goodby, Guanajuato, Mexico

After a month and a half, I’m still enchanted by the historical center of the town and the views of the houses perched on each other as they climb the hills. The university sponsors all kind of event. I’ve been to a dozen foreign movies, for examples, with Spanish subtitles I barely understand! There always seems an excuse for parades and festivals. This week the anniversary of the Mexican revolution. This gives the place a definite vitality worth experiencing. 

 A tourist destination for Mexican people as well as foreigners, it must have a hundred hotels and dozens of hostels. I stayed  at Casa de Dante for a month. A wonderful breakfast included, beautifully illustrated inside, clean, comfortable, fresh bedding. The staff very helpful. The only drawback: 175 steps up from the street! This old guy did it every day and  I a sure I’m in better shape for it. The city extremely hilly, which gives it it’s beauty. 

Americans views of Mexico completely off base. The country more prosperous and sophisticated than it was 35 to 60 years ago on my previous visits. The country safe, as long as you stay away from narco traffic. Here’s video which goes into some detail:

                              https://youtu.be/kULFS6tsRPI 

What I worry about most is tripping and falling. The sidewalks often a landline. Rough stones, broken tiles. As video says, building codes not as strict, I did fall getting off a bus on my first day. After being hit in a chico crosswalk a few years ago, I don’t really trust anybody.  In Guanajuato the drivers generally conscious of you, but the streets very narrow the walkways almost non-existent. That said, you just have to be careful. 

Sorry I  to leave. I hope México City turns out to be as much fun as it was last year. Okay, later. 

CAL FIRE, PG&E, AND THE BELIEF IN MAGIC

  

Yes, it’s one big black hole. 





I am amazed when I scroll through the engines and airplanes cal-fire has acquired while the fires in California keep getting bigger and more deadly. What is all this expensive stuff doing for us? Huge airplanes that can fly only during the day on flat land and rolling ridges. In 2003 they closed 77 lookouts, saying they were too expensive. Three years later they rented their first DC10 for three million dollars, 5,500 dollars an hour to run. One plane vs. five lookout seasons. Crazy, no? How are they getting away with it?

It’s our belief in technological magic. For some reason we think bigger bombers, helicopters with fancy names (black hawk, etc.) can save us from conflagrations in front of 80 mile an hour winds. Forget it. And again, none of them can fly at night or in powerful updrafts of smoke. And the bigger the aircraft the less useful it is. But they play well on TV and when they fly overhead, everybody goes OOOOOH!  Basically, it’s a pr stunt to buy them more magical toys.

God, their budget has gone through the roof. And what real good has it done?Cameras can’t beat lookouts, this has been proven over and over again. As for warning people by telephone, what about those with phones dead because of PG&E blackouts? Not to mention those with wells whose wells won’t pump and they’ve no water to put out the sparks on their roofs. Yes, PG&E does have a grip on the real magic ELECTRICITY. Our whole world runs on it.

Why aren’t these two mega corporations focused on real answers EARLY DETECTION AND BURYING POWER LINES? PGE is merely punishing people for suing them. They’re saying, “We have the real power. See how much you need us” isn’t it really nasty? And as for cal - fire, they won’t install air-raid sirens all over the state. That’s too easy, not technological enough, like telephone calls thousands won’t get. Both organizations trading in magic in their different ways. And we remain   Gullible. 

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-06/california-lookouts-fire-watchers

A knife in the heart of the Forest Service

My first boss 1962 shipped beer to guys on a fire! That would never happen today, alas. The forest service has become a dehumanized bureaucracy living off faint memories of what it once was. And what was that in the old days and why did it change? 

There are three basic reasons: First the cuts in the budget by Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s. Services once provided by the outfit like road crews, nurseries, people in the field who gathered seeds, the patrols once making sure fires didn’t get started. In other words, all the field people vanished.  Gradually there were simply desk generals supervising seasonal ‘employees.’ If the forests degraded over a period of forty years, this is what happened.

And secondly, small districts combined into mega-units. This meant the small family feeling of people living together at ranger stations disappeared. Those who were intimate with each other and with the lands within their charge no longer were. A large separation appeared between supervisors and the supervised. It became much more like an army fighting fire. Or perhaps like a monastery. Sure, comraderie still exists, but it’s that of soldiers in the field, not a family in a home. 

And the final blow came from sending all administrative personal into exile in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This meant mainly the women who ran the district offices, who organized all gatherings for birthdays, who gave sympathy and help to the home crew. Now celebrations are few and far between, meant to boost the hierarchy of the church, highly organized and essentially impersonal. 

Not that a few small units in the service don’t have a residue of humanity. I’m often touched by facebook posts by dispatchers who managed to create an intimate group despite the extreme tensions of working under fire and in confined spaces. This doesn’t often happen, as I know from my own experience,    But the potential Is there. Otherwise, it’s mostly small units boosted by action under fire the way soldiers are. 

There’s no returning to the past. The whole country has gone this way. My own family used to have large reunions. They kept contact with family letters. This was a chain-mail togetherness. A letter was sent from one family member to the next, pictures added, news traded. This very personal connection can’t really be replaced by facebook. The news travels too fast and intangible, a complete lack of smells and fingerprints. Yes, it’s sad to be a survivor of a past almost no one knows. 

LOOKOUT! ending the fire season

wow, nothing like a fifty-mile an hour, freezing east wind to make the end of the season welcome. the pipes froze (again) and finally i had to throw my clothes over my feet despite two heaters running. my dreams rather sad accounts of suffering people, which i should have expected. my fingertips freezing on the keys even with another heater going by my chair. and i had been feeling melancholy about closing up two weeks earlier than in past years.

i wonder how other lookouts feel about closing. i look at their faces on facebook and they don't seem really happy. life on the flatland much more confusing, certainly more noisy. i get so used to the silence and the wind in trees, i feel rather desperate  when i hit the pavement to live among so many other people.  usually, though they give us laughter and company, other folks add a lot of confusion to my life. too many thoughts circle around pleasing and being pleased.

it's not like i have complete solitude, not with three telephones and two radios. tourists do visit to check out the view. when fires happen, the radios crackle and hundreds jump into action. then i am part of a team, plenty of company there. and i do have days off. alas, on those days i feel mostly stunned, moving like a zombie, only livening up when i return to the tower. up here, i can avoid biziness for it's own sake. a visit to movie can slow me down. being part of an audience does something for me even the tower doesn't.

even up here everything i own demands an obligation. computers want to be work, books to be read, musical instruments to be played. if i don't put them to use i feel guilty. i suspect other people feel overwhelmed by their possessions. a garage full of stuff, a storage space, drawers and closets to be cleaned. whatever we own gives us a sense of identity, and at the same time we have to make sure that identity clean and tidy, acceptable to ourselves and our neighbors. i keep trying to get rid of stuff, yet little things like books keep creeping back. everything gets heavy.

once again, i've bought a ticket to mexico. this lightens my load to two small carry-ons and that's a relief. i've reserved simple places to stay. if i don't have a plan, the end of the season can be disastrous. one year i simply wanted to jump off the cliff below the lookout. that was rather scary. i do need someplace to go, something to look forward to. one 83 year old lookout goes to a small town in western australia to stay with  a friend. another hooks up her little trailer to head south. others hibernate in their houses, waiting patiently (or not), for next year. nothing, i think, can really can replace your glass cabin on top of a mountain.

good luck to all you arranging your visage to live in the world. and welcome back when next season arrives!

The Forest Service has a public relations goldmine in firelookouts

this is so obvious it makes me crazy no one at the national office realizes it. if you work on a lookout, you experience it every day. people astounded lookouts still exist and they are fired up by the romance of them. the views take their breath away and they can't believe people still looking out for them. i get all kinds of questions about the forest, how it's taken care of (or not). lookouts remain the best advocates the forest service has. 

here's a quote from Poets On The Peaks by John Suiter:

                                      click to read

 the poets gary snyder and jack kerouac established the romance of lookouts in literary history. kerouac wrote of his experience three time in Lonesome Traveler, Darma Bums, and Desolation Angels. these books remain in print. and gary snyder is always asked to read the one lookout poem he wrote:

he also included his lookout journals in Earth House  Hold. 

another lookout who came a little later and actually had even more success: edward abby. he experienced every lookout's fantasy when he worked on the north rim of the grand canyon. a young woman walked out of the woods and they had a torrid romance. she suddenly disappeared and his heart broken. he wrote of the experience in a novel Black Sun. he finished his most famous book Desert Solitaire while staffing Harness Peak on lassen national forest. 

fortunately, the park service does realize the value of what they have and this lookout undergoing a very complete restoration. 

i can't resist including this fun audio of edward abby reading:

both symbol and myth, lookouts do more than merely spot fires. they represent america at its best. i would like to see more lookouts renovated and opened. the state of Pennsylvania has re-established  25 lookouts and built two more. i wish the forest service and the state of california would open their eyes. 

DON'T REMOVE THE HUMAN WITNESS (remember cameras can lie)

this came to me after thinking how all fire managers want to remove the human presence. then they've no one to say, "you just screwed up!" of course, blaming it on cameras means nothing. everybody knows technology goofs up: the electricity goes off, the alarm fails, the airplane misses it's drop. and yet, the public believes only human beings can fail.

this is definitely a cynical ploy! here's what a long-time fire-pilot says:

alas, the state of california fire having too much fun spending millions and millions on air-tankers and helicopters. it gives the illusion they can stop fires incinerating a town in a matter of hours. there's no question global warning making fires so fierce they suck the life right out of any human bodies they run across. 

and as for what is true, this is a very interesting Ted Talk called Why do we believe what is not true. 

he says none of us knows enough on our own. we collect our notions from other people and we fail to examine them in any depth.

i'm as guilty as anyone. for instance, the amazon touted as the source of 20% of the earth's oxygen. this a great rallying cry. unfortunately, it's not true. much of that oxygen re-absorbed to re-energize plant growth. maybe 7% escapes. another statistic: evidently the amount of burning area on earth has declined 25% in the past twenty years. others claim elsewhere forests making a come-back. 

this doesn't mean the west won't burn, temperatures rising, whatever the cause. and what about the seas rising 23 feet? we will just have to wait and see. bill gates wants to drop a chemical in the upper atmosphere to dim the sun. and isn't that like introducing rabbits into australia, then dingoes to control the bursting population? 

so, just like i'm saying we need living eyes on lookouts, i'm claiming we need watchdogs and not just computers to win elections, to catch crooks not paying taxes, to help old ladies across the street. 

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER (is anybody watching?)

so, bob dylan has sung this song almost two thousand times onstage. and i can't help humming it up here in my tower:

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside, in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl

++++

lookout towers have more than a functional interest (spotting fires). they announced the fall of troy. in ireland they warned of the vikings coming. in japan they fended off burning arrows. they really are the symbol of the nation. 

Man is preceded by a forest, followed by a desert said this graffiti from the 1968 student demonstrations in paris. and it's only too true. look at the deserts of north africa where ancient roman, greek, and carthaginian cites once flourished. in FORESTS, THE SHADOW OF CIVILIZATION robert pogue harrison  says human beings have always had a fight with  the forest. civilization means to tame them. well look what is happening in the amazon so men can raise cattle:

20% of the oxygen on earth produced by these forests. i can feel breathing getting harder. everybody seems to be looking, but nobody is watching. it's too abstract, two thousand miles away. alas, they have no watchtowers to tell us what is actually is happening. pictures on the tube won't do it.

when my relief lookout called to tell me about planes crashing into the twin towers, i turned on the tv briefly. then i switched to audio, listening to the screams in the street. the whole scene became real. without human voices describing the scene, we feel it as unreal, just another movie. firetowers across the united states necessary to make the coming climate change real.

i like a human witness, in fact i need them. otherwise the emotions of the moment get lost. i feel fire lookouts now necessary to tell people, GET OUT OF THE WAY! otherwise we can't take the alarms seriously, just another matter of crying Wolf! Wolf! and i feel the same way about the coming changes in the climate. like the frog in a pan of water, we can't feel the increasing heat until we're boiled alive. 

MEISTER ECKHART

Some voices from the past are always present. 

Interviews

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/Our-future-after-the-fire-Fire-lookout-towers-547001131.html

https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mynspr.org%2Fpost%2Fnancys-bookshelf-wayne-pease%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2rhbAC42WfYUWjmqebZ8BKvInfdNJjdubtmxLqaf-vDRD499Fhmy_-yEY%23stream%2F0&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce86df18d32dc40e1af1308d71959502e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637005743696744680&sdata=lMYhftyJdS%2F7OD3kOBfbNvxCZaSjt%2BW%2BQ7fVYLGExD4%3D&reserved=0

is smoky the bear real? (yes and no)

on the yes side: watching the bear give out candy and shake hands with three year-olds, i have to say, "for those little kids, the bear is real, like santa claus." and as with the northern visitor, i am convinced i will be protected and get everything for nothing. alas, it seems like all the adults with them believe the same. our belief in santa claus no longer seems to die.

unfortunately, when i watch an often reluctant firefighter climb into the bear suit and later out of it hot and sweaty, i have to admit to myself smoky is an illusion. i want him to be real, just as i want a powerful father figure to watch over and take care of me. i'm an american, after all, yearning for a powerful man or bear to save me. 

i do like the fact smoky is brown and an animal. i'm tired of white gods (and men) i can no longer believe in, who pick my pocket as i worship them.  and i agree illusions more real than reality.  THE AGE OF DENIAL is upon us. even numbers don't seem to work any more. i can tell you california fires five times as big as in 1972, i can tell you a town up the road burned down, 27,000 homeless, 85 dead. many simply will not believe the pictures and maps, not even if they see it with their own eyes.

and smoky is part of the problem. SMOKY SEES ALL. HE WILL PROTECT THE FOREST. PUT OUT ALL THE FIRES BY HIMSELF WITH NO MONEY FOR SUPPLIES. alas, washington finds the forests a nuisance and wishes they would go away. it is more fun to buy bombers and aircraft carriers. they pump up the economy. the woods simply demand funds and care. the forests can be ignored.

unfortunately, the forest service has had to go along with it, having nobody but smoky to speak for them. in this sense, smoky isn't real. he can attract the bare minimum of funds for fighting fires. too bad he doesn't really have a divine shovel to fight off the lightning bolts. he's not the superman he's made out to be. 

since i constantly promote the rebuilding of lookouts and a system with human eyes in the sky, i'll say what i see coming: BIGGER FIRES THAT CANNOT BE STOPPED, PERIOD. what i feel we need to do is SAVE LIVES. help escape routes to be found, put up a system of fire-sirens to warn everybody, to have both lookouts and cameras for early detection. give smoky more tools. stop believing in fantasies. 

romance of the forest? (gone)

i guess i'm just too old. when i was five, i ran around in the woods all day, BY MYSELF, even though we lived in western towns. my first books were about mountain men - jim bridger and kit carson - and legendary indians - black hawk and rain-in-the-face. our family camped out all over the united states, canada, and europe, exploring natural wonders. once i lay for hours in yellowstone park, waiting for a tiny geyser to explode, as it would do unpredictably once a day. 

this world is no longer available to today's kids. they're trapped in parental surveillance, not to mention city streets and asphalt. so they're attracted to the virtual world, to computers and hacking where they can travel the universe. they want to be astronauts, settlers on mars, have artificial-intelligence lovers who do everything they say, the outdoor to be lived represented by footprints on the moon. 

the forests, years ago, in the 19th century, the creation of a divine being. americans were the chosen  people, and this was god's country. at the same time they loved their machines, especially the railroads. the forests were sold to the railroads and they've huge domains today, with which they can do whatever they wish. with the cry, MANIFEST DESTINY, the united states has the right and duty to keep expanding, it rules us today with a huge army, navy, air force, and border guards. 

alas, that last, manifest destiny, means all our resources devoted to the reality, ownership, and conquest of the rest of the world. conservation groups have lost the power of mythology and memory to off-the-road vehicles, snow-mobiles, campers, and the logging industry, nobody is left to root for nature. thoreau and emerson kept the country going for a long time. now they are ghosts of the past. 

the power of myth has shifted from the natural world, to the imaginary heroics of technology. america has grown away from it's roots: 

i've often thought japan won wwII by inventing the off-the-road vehicles which rampage across our sand-dunes and deserts, and whose owners believe they have an eternal right-of-way. 

the symbol of american has become the cut stump. it definitely should be put on the flag. 

mismanagement of the forests? no, no funds

1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service Warns

i started working for the forest service in 1962. it was my place of choice, since i was surrounded by many folks doing interesting work, all concerned with NURTURING  the forest, doing thorough fire prevention, checking all timber cut to make sure it followed guidelines and honestly recorded volume. biologists monitored streams, recreation people made sure the rules by users were not damaging, and so on. 

in the past twenty years all those workers disappeared. the auto shops were closed, so repairs had to contracted out, expensively. road crews vanished, those who used to clear the brush from back roads, grade them. now culverts collapsing , roads overgrown, making it difficult for even the new, bigger fire engines to reach flames from lightning. the planting crews no longer plant trees, the nurseries where thousands of seedlings grown closed and vacant.

the recreation staff has dwindled to perhaps one person per forest. visitors pretty much free to do what they want, despite the regulations.  90% of the people  the fire people doing prevention vanished. to back this up, here's a quote from a retired fire guy on facebook:


Mark A. Brown As you said, prevention is the key. In the 70s I was a prevention patrolman with a 200 gal tank and 500' of hose. Our district, Clackamas District on the south end of Mt. Hood Nat'l Forest, was divided into five patrol routes which covered all of the district. Each route was covered by a patrolman each and every day. Every lake on the district was walked, every campsite and heavy use off-site camps were covered each and every day, they also met with the public, instructed on fire safety, posted fire safety signs, etc. I drove around the district last summer and never saw a single forest service truck at all. The whole district seems abandoned. The old Ripplebrook Ranger Station is now a convenience store. The Clackamas District and Estacada District combined into one and is administered from Estacada. With no presence showing, people are doing whatever they want up there it seems.


thus, it's not just a matter of what i've seen with my own eyes.

the forest service has been gutted by washington. look at this mandala of government expenditures. can you see how little is being spent on food and agriculture, see that little sliver at the top?

services once provided through the department of agriculture to the forest serve gone. so can the forest service be condemned? only smoky the bear acts as a constituency attracting the public. and fires consume so much money the service falls in the donut hole at certain point, thereafter required to use management funds, leaving even less for everyday use. 

and lookouts have been drastically reduced in number. once eight lookouts peered into the half a million acres i now cover by myself. and even where last year we had world disaster starting on our forest, the CAMPFIRE, 27,000 homeless, 87 dead, the fire fund for our district reduced. gone are the days when having big fires would mean more money in the budget for next year.

i love this picture of smoky the bear. what can he see, hiding behind a house at ground level?

   

                                       


this is the reality. compare it with what lookouts have always been able to see:

the forests divested of guardians, certainly not observed by the public. the shell remains, as the forests die from the ground up. we're picking cherries from a dying tree, and i don't think our grandchildren will thank us for it. 

                                                        

things not thought through (fire and technology)

                                                              my drone experience

the hair on the back of my neck rises, every time i read about what is happening with fire around the world. alas, a huge percentage of americans do not believe global warming actually happening. of course, more and more violent weather will get their attention. let the west coast have more tornadoes and the seas in Louisiana rise.....

a friend said to me years ago, IT'S A MATTER OF OUR TECHNOLOGY STAYING AHEAD OF OUR STUPIDITY.  unfortunately, technology has become our stupidity. we seem unable to judge the consequences of the same.  on a DC10 incident from wikipedia:

Tanker 910 experienced its first serious aviation incident on June 25, 2007. While on its third run over the White Fire in the Kern County mountains near Tehachapi, California, the aircraft was in a left bank while turning from base to final approach. It encountered sinking air, the left wing dropped, and the aircraft descended 100–200 feet (30–61 m) lower than expected.^[14][32] The left wing struck several trees before pilots were able to power out of the descent. The aircraft climbed to altitude for a controllability check and to dump its load of retardant, then returned to its base in Victorville, California where it made an emergency landing and was grounded pending an investigation, inspection, and repairs.^[14][32][33]

a commentator on facebook says he's just waiting for one to crash, the plane very clumsy for what it's being used for. i maintain they can't be used much in the mountains and are a waste of money. 

let's see, what about drones? they seem to be all over fire sites, as the wonder drug! well, what about drones crashing into other aircraft? every time a drone appears near a fire, operations closed down. can they really be managed? i grant they could have a use to check out smokes already spotted. can they operate in smoky conditions and high heat? how many people will it take to monitor them? if they crash, what kind of a fire will they cause? can they fly in high winds?

most americans think global warming fake news. unfortunately, the affects are upon us. here's from an article on fire-fighting in spain:

‘Traditionally we could predict the fire behaviour and the direction of the fire but under those conditions and those moments it’s not possible,’ said Marc Castellnou, president of the Spanish independent wildfire prevention group Pau Costa Foundation.

While these fires are rare, when one strikes it can generate 100,000 kilowatts of energy per metre. In firefighting terms, this is 10 times what a firefighter can handle, but even at 4,000 kilowatts, firefighters cannot go near the flames and require aerial support. ‘The old way of fighting fires by sending firefighters – that’s gone,’ Castellnou said.

‘This change has been cooking for a long time, but the first time we realised something wrong was happening were the years 2009 and 2012,’ he said, referring to the Black Saturday bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria that killed 173 people and wildfires in Spain, Portugal, Chile and California, US. Many in the fire community initially thought these were just abnormal events, he says.

But then wildfires in Chile and Portugal in 2017 indicated that those weren’t simply extreme years. ‘That was the new normal arriving. 2018 has confirmed that,’ he said, referring to the deadly wildfires in Greece and in California.

VIOLENT WEATHER: this the main result of global warming. without the big picture being addressed, locals will be at the mercy of high winds and hurricanes, tornadoes and drought. if technology can't fix the source, it certainly won't where we live. i believe we need a return to staffed lookouts all over the country. this won't solve the problem, but it might buy us time until people can be herded into spaceships and dispatched from the planet. 

PENNSYLVANIA REINTRODUCES FIRE TOWERS:  

NICHOLAS A. TONNELLI ON FLICKR/CREATIVE COMMONS 2.0Ricketts Glen State Park is the site of one of the fire towers Pennsylvania may replace.

More than six decades after transitioning to newer methods, Pennsylvania is returning to a tried-and-true approach toward combating forest fires: fire towers. The state plans to replace up to 25 existing towers and to build two new ones by summer 2017. Fire wardens and volunteers will staff the towers during the height of fire season, typically March through May.

                                                the only people using their brains

has washington abandoned the forest service? (pretty much)

poor smoky, carrying 27 national forests on his back, the only constituency the forest service has. in washington conservationists fight the playmate groups - hunters, fishermen, off-the-road vehicle drivers, snowmobile people, and so on,  the forests advertised as playgrounds. if i'm asked what has changed since 1962, i have to say the end of people working in the field. no road and planting crews, no fish and wildlife experts, firefighting prevention reduced to almost nothing. 

here's a comment i received on facebook: 

Mark A. Brown As you said, prevention is the key. In the 70s I was a prevention patrolman with a 200 gal tank and 500' of hose. Our district, Clackamas District on the south end of Mt. Hood Nat'l Forest, was divided into five patrol routes which covered all of the district. Each route was covered by a patrolman each and every day. Every lake on the district was walked, every campsite and heavy use off-site camps were covered each and every day, they also met with the public, instructed on fire safety, posted fire safety signs, etc. I drove around the district last summer and never saw a single forest service truck at all. The whole district seems abandoned. The old Ripplebrook Ranger Station is now a convenience store. The Clackamas District and Estacada District combined into one and is administered from Estacada. With no presence showing, people are doing whatever they want up there it seems.

so the evidence goes beyond what i've seen with my own eyes!

since i haven't mentioned my first love, lookouts, here goes. this forest once had 26 lookouts, now effectively five. the fact was: two lookouts could see a smoke and where their compass readings crossed, there was the smoke, pinpointed. the system work well. alas, 21 lookouts eliminated, and a dependence on a helicopter which  often isn't here, deployed to fires on other forests, days at a time.

eight lookouts used to overlook my area, half a million acres, now there's only me. in a way, i don't mind. lookouts tend to compete with each other and i don't have to worry about that. alas, it is rather lonesome. and to figure out where a smoke's at can be pretty challenging. if the helicopter not on base, crews on the ground will take a lot longer. that can have some devastating consequences. the flames can go from the size of a match to hundred foot flames in high winds absurdly quickly. 

on that note i would like to mention, after 56 seasons i have no benefits, no retirement, and work for minimum wage, having to supply my own vehicle and gas, no mean feat, as lookout roads are notoriously bad. how does this relate to cutbacks? for 35 years i received pay for my lunch break. last summer, from their majesty in washington, that was eliminated, cutting my pay 12.5 percent (thanks for the pat on the back) and leaving a half a million acres unwatched when the wind comes up and the temperature rises. SO MUCH FOR LOOKOUTS BEING EXPENSIVE. 

i do want to say, i love the job and the people i work with, forest service folks the best, one of the things that's kept me going. as i'm reaching my dotage, i feel it my responsibility to say something. the forest has always been the enemy of civilization. and what we call 'civilized' is getting the upper hand. meditate on the desert lands of north africa and the remnants of their great roman and greek cities. they lost their forests and sacrificed their lives.

                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                          THE MYTHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF FORESTS