Fire On The Mountain

The sun wasn't yet up and I was standing in a grassy field, next to a rickety row of white tents and plastic banquet tables stacked with sugary baked goods and cold Egg McMuffins. About 60 men (and a handful of women) in puffy jackets, cargo pants and bright yellow, flame-resistant shirts milled about, drinking coffee and trying to stay warm. Parked around us were about 20 trucks, four-wheel drive vehicles and fire engines, one of which had a giant map tacked to it.

Yesterday, I was at my very first prescribed burn and it was fantastic. I'll admit - the morning started off a little slow. "Be here for the 7am briefing," they said. It started at 8am and lasted 10 minutes. The burn didn't start until 10am - which left almost two hours to kill in the 38 degree, breezy morning air before seeing any action. But it was totally worth the wait.

A prescribed burn is a deliberate use of fire by the US Forest Service or other land management agencies (in this case, Boulder County) to improve forest health and reduce the amount of fuel that can otherwise contribute to an extreme wildfire event. 

This particular burn took place in one of Boulder County's Open Spaces - an area known as Heil Valley Ranch. It's north of Boulder, nestled into one of the many canyons along the Front Range as you drive along Highway 36. The ranch belonged to a family at one point but, as the owners have gotten older, they've sold off chunks of the property to the county, which now owns over 5000 acres. It's a gorgeous spot - the foothills are covered in grasses and ponderosa pines and if you look down the valley to the south, you can see Bear Peak rising above the Flatiron Mountains. 

A little bit of background here: for about a century, there was a general belief in the US that fires were a really bad idea. That led to a policy of complete fire suppression - basically, don't let anything burn and if it does catch fire, put it out ASAP. It was something of a misguided notion - we've since come to realize that fire is necessary to this landscape, just as important as rain. Fire's necessary to keep forests healthy, both for the trees and for the other plants and animals that live in this ecosystem and, in the end, regular smaller fires - coming every 20 years or so - can prevent huge, catastrophic fires from roaring through.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get that so, during that century of fire suppression, A LOT of trees grew. A lot a lot. On Heil Valley Ranch, there were as many as 3000 trees per acre. The healthy number is somewhere closer to 70 or 80 per acre. So you've got unhealthy forests that are absolutely choked with trees - forests that are more prone to disease, where other native species are crowded out and where, if a fire does start, it can quickly climb up into the tops of the trees - what's known as a crown fire - and get out of control. 

So, before the county could even think about doing a prescribed burn here, they had to get in there and start thinning out the trees. Cutting them down, spacing them out, removing dead and dying trees - trying to restore some semblance of what these forests would look like naturally. This is an incredibly labor-intensive process. Forest management teams have to get into the forest where there are no roads, cut down trees and haul that stuff out to places where it can be burned - much of this is done by hand. Ultimately, though, if it's done right, a fire here - whether prescribed or natural - will move more slowly, crawling along the ground and consuming grasses and seedlings and leaving mature, healthy trees behind.

Now - back to the burn. The county has prepped about 150 acres that they were hoping to burn over a three to five day period. They may not get it all done this year - doing a successful prescribed burn relies heavily on a wide variety of conditions - temperature, humidity, how much moisture is in the vegetation, wind, air quality. Everything has to be monitored very carefully and if one of these conditions changes, that can mean shutting the whole operation down, or only doing parts of it, leaving the rest for another year.

Yesterday morning was really cold and the wind was already kicking up a bit, making the burn bosses question whether the burn could even happen. But after running a test fire, conditions seemed favorable and they continued. Firefighters, using what are called drip torches (they contain a mix of diesel and gasoline - a less flammable, flammable mixture), incrementally lit grasses and scrub on fire. 

That fire spread and, if all looked like it was going ok, they took a few steps back and lit up some more fuel. The wind was at their backs, so the flames and smoke moved away from them toward the poor firefighters on the other side of the fire, who (aside from trying to avoid smoke inhalation) were watching closely to make sure no fire escaped or got out of control.

From where we media types were standing, we could only see smoke at first - big black plumes rising into the morning sky. Every now and then, you'd catch a glimpse of a bright orange, high-reaching flame. As the fire got closer, it was mesmerizing. Flames rapidly consumed grasses, stumps and and low-lying shrubs. They ran up the sides of healthy trees, burning off lower, dead branches and turning pine needles into spots of fluorescent orange before they curled into ash. What's cool is that these older trees are meant to withstand fire - their thick bark protects them, flaking off in places - and the fire would really only lick their outer edges before moving on to more combustible fuels.

And man, was it hot. From fifteen feet off, you could feel the heat - which was nice, given how cold I'd been all morning. From ten feet, I was wishing I didn't have so many layers on. At five feet, I could feel the skin on my face tightening and the moisture evaporating from my lips. I can only imagine how toasty it was for the people actually walking around in it, wearing heavy protective layers.

All in all, a pretty neat way to spend a morning and some good insight into how involved forest management is and how careful these guys are during this burn process. They'll be up there for several more days, burning more acreage and then making sure that everything is out once they've finished.

A Diversity Problem

In my last post, I mentioned how the great outdoors suffers from a lack of diversity - both racial and economic. You visit a national park, sleep in a campsite, raft a river, climb a mountain or even just go on a hike and, chances are, the majority of the people you'll run into are white.

That diversity gap, which was the topic of our fellowship seminar yesterday, is something that our speaker, James Edward Mills, is very familiar with. He's worked in the outdoor industry since 1989 in a variety of roles - guide, outfitter, sales rep - often as the only African-American around. He's also a freelance journalist and his latest project is a shiny new book called The Adventure Gap: Changing The Face of the Outdoors. 

That face - as I mentioned - is largely white. But US demographics are shifting and by the year 2042, it's expected that the majority of the country's population will be made up of people of color. Protecting our natural treasures means engaging more diverse communities in caring for the outdoors and Mills argues that one of the first steps toward this is creating good, multicultural role models who can inspire a more diverse group of kids to get outside. But where to find those role models?

Well, you can start with unearthing them from long-forgotten history. 

Here's one example - the Buffalo Soldiers, the African-American members of the U.S. Army cavalry regiments, which were formed in 1866 to fight in the Indian Wars. In the early part of the 20th century, 400 of these soldiers were tasked with patrolling national parks, including Yosemite and Sequoia. They were some of the nation's first park rangers - laying trails, patrolling forests, building roads - before the park system really even existed. It's a story that Mills - an outdoor adventurer since he was a kid - hadn't heard until he sat down with filmmaker Ken Burns in 2008. And if he hadn't heard it, you can bet that an inner city kid probably doesn't know that story, either.

Another example - Matthew Henson. His name likely doesn't ring any bells but that of his traveling companion will - Captain Robert Peary, leader of the first successful expedition to the North Pole. Henson was born in Maryland in 1866. At age 12, he went to sea and spent six years learning navigation and sailing. Upon his return, he started working at a furrier's shop and one of his customers was Peary, who took a liking to Henson and hired him as his valet. Henson quickly became an integral part of Peary's expeditions - the two of them explored Greenland and made multiple attempts at reaching the North Pole. Finally, in 1909, they were successful - but because Henson was African-American, his contribution was overlooked (in fact, for years, the success of the entire expedition was doubted because there was no white person other than Peary to verify the story). 

As for modern role models?

Well, there's Charles Crenchaw - the first African-American man to summit Denali, the highest mountain in North America, in 1964, just seven days after the Civil Rights Amendment became law.

There's Sophia Danenberg - the first African-American and the first black woman to summit Mt. Everest, in 2006. 

And there's the group at the center of Mills's book - the first, all African-American team to make an attempt on Denali. Spoiler alert - after enduring major avalanches and some unseasonably warm weather, they didn't quite make it, after being driven off the mountain by a lightning storm. But as the expedition's website says: 

...the ultimate objective was not just to make mountaineering history, but to build a legacy by paving a way for young people of color to get outside, get active, get healthy, become passionate about America’s wild places, and chase their own Denali-sized dreams.

While every member of the Expedition Denali team was an experienced outdoorsman (or woman), they also were community leaders - in education, journalism, business, mountaineering, with youth groups and outdoor organizations. And when they finished this adventure, they went back to their lives as representatives of what can adventures can be had in the great outdoors - no matter your race. 

And building a broader coalition of outdoor enthusiasts doesn't have to involve something as arduous (or as expensive) as climbing a mountain. Hiking, walking, observing nature - those things are all free, or close to it, and usually more accessible. Role models play a part here, too - it can be as simple as taking a kid to explore a nearby park or forest, helping them fall in love with a place, not just for now, but for a lifetime. That's something that should happen in every community - regardless of race or economic background - if we want people to feel like these beautiful spaces belong just as much to them as to anyone else.

Smallest Area Compatible

I meant to write about this last week but then had out of town visitors and didn't get around to it. But you don't want excuses! You want information! So I bring you a (slightly) dated entry on some news from last Friday.

On October 10, President Obama announced he would use his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to turn approximately 350,000 acres of national forest land in California's San Gabriel Mountains into a national monument. Those 350,000 acres are now permanently protected - no new development, no new mining claims - for the purposes of increased recreation and improved opportunities and access, especially for people living near those mountains.

Personally, I find this pretty exciting - when I lived in Pasadena, the San Gabriels (which are northeast of LA) were right out my front door. They're an imposing wall of a mountain range, rising quickly from nearly sea level up to 6,000 feet in elevation. From a distance, they look dry and foreboding, almost impenetrable. But up close, you can find all kinds of canyons and ravines that are much more lush than you would ever expect in such an arid place. Hundreds of miles of trails criss-cross these peaks, which also serve as a home to some of California's endangered species (like the condor), as well as provide about 30 percent of LA's drinking water.

And what's really cool is that 15 million people live within ninety minutes of those mountains. LA County is one of the poorest in California. It's among the most disadvantaged in the nation when it comes to access to parks and outdoor spaces for minorities and kids. The San Gabriels are one of the biggest open spaces available to Angelenos and, by preserving these mountains, the administration ensures that this area will have more resources for maintenance, restoration, education and access. (Although I do wonder about those people who don't have cars available to use - does this really improve things for them?)

All in all, though, this is a pretty neat development, both for LA and for public lands. The national park system and outdoor recreation as a whole suffer from a lack of racial and economic diversity. Having open land and recreational spaces that are more easily available to poor and minority communities can only mean good things. More on this in a future post - we have someone coming to talk to our fellowship about just this issue later this week.

For now let's turn back to that Antiquities Act - the legislation that gave the president the right to create this national monument in the San Gabriels. 

In 1906, Congress passed a bill allowing the president to set aside chunks of public land for the protection of landmarks, structures, areas of historical or natural importance, or scientific or ecological significance. The bill also established penalties for destroying or taking objects from these areas and only granted permits for archeological excavation to reputed scientific and educational institutions, "with a view to increasing the knowledge of such objects, and that the gatherings shall be made for permanent preservation in public museums."

This legislation grew out of a desire to protect certain areas (especially Native American ruins in the Southwest) from trophy hunters, vandalism and destruction. President Theodore Roosevelt - widely considered America's "Conservationist President" - signed it into law within hours of its arrival on his desk on June 8, 1906. Roosevelt didn't waste any time putting it to use, either. In September of that same year, he set aside Devil's Tower in Wyoming as a National Monument. He went on to create 17 more of these national monuments before he left power in 1909. Among those were some HUGE chunks of land - including 800,000 acres in and around the Grand Canyon - which Roosevelt defended using this clause from the new law (emphasis mine): 

That the President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected...

It's not entirely clear if the original architects of the Antiquities Act intended for such enormous withholdings to be declared national monuments. The historical records from the time show some squabbling over the final wording - they may have expected only smaller parcels to be protected. However you have to wonder, given President Roosevelt's activist nature, if there wasn't some inkling of what might happen. But there really wasn't much opposition - a miner brought suit in federal court, claiming the president overstepped his bounds, but the Supreme Court ruled (unanimously) in favor of the Antiquities Act, a ruling it has stuck to in every challenge going forward. 

Following in Roosevelt's footsteps, 16 presidents (excluding Nixon, Reagan and George H. W. Bush) have reserved millions of acres as national monuments, some of which have later become national parks. Obama's action on the San Gabriel Mountains brings the number of national monuments named in his administration up to 13, for a total of 230 million acres. He says he's not done. (And - for the record - his predecessor, George W. Bush was no slouch in this department. W set aside 200 million acres). 

Stop for a moment, though, and think about those three words from the clause above - smallest area compatible. They're pretty incredible. That phrase is so subjective, so unlimited, so imprecise. And its presence in the Antiquities Act has given numerous presidents a tremendous amount of latitude in preserving some of the most iconic and beautiful scenery we have. The original framers may not have intended things to go this way but, as a nation, we should be grateful that phrase made the cut. Those lands are ours to visit and breath in and enjoy for generations to come - which is no small thing.

My Fellow Fellows: Urban Farming

I'm not alone in this program - there are four other smart and talented people who are also part of this year's fellowship class. I thought I'd introduce them through the projects they're working on - here's Introduction Number One.

Sena Christian is a freelance reporter from Sacramento, California and she's done a lot of writing on food and sustainability issues. She makes a mean mac 'n' cheese and, as a vegetarian, suffered mightily on our trip to New Orleans (veggie options were kind of hard to come by). And she's a total go-getter - she's already kicked off her project with a nice piece on urban farms.

These farms - cultivated within the city limits - can be found everywhere from vacant lots to school and church property to private property and other areas like park land or road sides. The crops are often sold right there at the farm and, in many cases, those farms are the only nearby source of fresh fruits and vegetables.

That can alleviate the problem of food deserts - neighborhoods where there is limited or no access to fresh, healthy food - which are most common in low-income areas. But urban farms are also beneficial to communities as a whole. As Sena points out in her piece, "They create jobs, alleviate hunger, reduce food waste, improve public health, create economic opportunities, and beautify neighborhoods."

As far as I can tell, there's not much to complain about here. And many cities - Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Minneapolis - have already adopted urban farm programs, or at least come up with policies to encourage them. 

But other cities haven't come as far and among them, I was surprised to learn, is Sacramento - a city that's been at the forefront of the local food movement. There, the city is just starting to consider a new urban agriculture ordinance. But they've limited who can sell produce - it has to come from farms in areas where agriculture is the primary use. That means vacant lots. Produce grown on church or school or private property would be subject to more rules and require farmers to jump through extra hoops. Which is kind of dumb. It makes something that seems like common sense - growing good food and making it available to the neighborhood in which it's grown - unnecessarily complicated.

Sacramento's Urban Agriculture Coalition is pushing back on these restrictions in advance of a City Council vote coming up later this year - and I'm hoping that my fellow fellow will cover the results.

In the meantime, you can follow Sena's writings, about sustainable farming and other topics, at her blog, Wailing Peacocks.