August 1, 2017
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Montana Outdoors
Pretty fine!
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Comment by nvsubbaraman — August 1, 2017 @ 4:19 pm
Thank you!
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 4:31 pm
If you had said “north” I would have said, “Yes, I can see and smell it,” but I guess it’s our BC fires that we are choking on today.
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Comment by wordsfromanneli — August 1, 2017 @ 5:50 pm
With all of our local fires, we don’t get much news about yours. How are you doing up there?
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 6:11 pm
Still going strong. The bigger communities have been allowed back home but some smaller ones have been evacuated in the meantime. The weather just now isn’t helping – hot and windy.
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Comment by wordsfromanneli — August 1, 2017 @ 6:41 pm
We are starting to get some wind too… again. I’ll be glad when this is over!
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 7:31 pm
I love that hour when the sun turns the landscape to gold.
Do the winds turn that smoke towards you so you can smell it in the air?
(I ask because sometimes a bushfire spreads a hazy effect across Melbourne and I can smell a large bushfire despite its distance).
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Comment by Vicki — August 1, 2017 @ 6:22 pm
Every year at this time we have smoke in the air. This year so far it hasn’t been too bad where I live, but one town has been evacuated because of the smoke and several others have been evacuated because of the fires. I would not like to have the wind shift!
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 8:53 pm
Fire season is always tense, isn’t it! We are dry here in our part of Alberta – and fortunately not much in the way of wild fires in the entire province. The province next door, BC, has declared a province wide state of emergency due to fires. The smoke from those fires has blanketed us for several weeks.
Speaking of tensely waiting, we haven’t had any hail yet…
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Comment by Margy — August 1, 2017 @ 7:47 pm
Yes, the tension is in the air. You have been very lucky to not have many fires. I guess it is about as dry there as it is here. A change in the weather will be very welcome when it comes!
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 8:57 pm
Always mixed emotions when we see beautiful landscapes “invaded” by flames and smoke. It is such a destructive, though very natural and necessary, part of the ecosystem.
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Comment by de Wets Wild — August 1, 2017 @ 8:13 pm
We have been our own enemies over the last century here by trying to eliminate all natural fires. A huge amount of material that normally would have burned in small pieces has accumulated and so the fires that start are larger ones. We have also allowed development in places where it should never have happened and now we nave to try to defend them too. When our arrogant species tries to “manage” Nature it never turns out well.
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 9:00 pm
Our sentiments exactly!
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Comment by de Wets Wild — August 2, 2017 @ 7:28 pm
Your reference to “managing” nature reminded me of John McPhee’s book called The Control of Nature. It’s divided into three sections. I first read the section about Louisiana flood control, but there also are sections about lava and about the fires in the mountains surrounding Los Angeles. Much of the book was originally published in The New Yorker magazine. Here’s one of those sections. It’s very brief, but gives you a taste his writing, and it seems that the magazine has most of those essays out from behind the paywall, and they pop up with a search for “John McPhee control of nature.” I think he’s one of the best writers ever. His book on the pine barrens of New Jersey is really something. Who knew that New Jersey was such a natural wonderland?
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Comment by shoreacres — August 1, 2017 @ 9:35 pm
I tried to figure out what the little white flowers are, but couldn’t. They’re a nice addition to the image as a whole. And the folds of the mountains are just lovely.
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Comment by shoreacres — August 1, 2017 @ 9:37 pm
The white flowers along the road are Yarrow and Pearly Everlasting. Nearby there are also large swaths of Buckwheat; both Douglass and Parsnip Buckwheat. I will post photos of them and some of the other flowers that bloom on or near the peak in a day or so.
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 10:16 pm
Yes, that was very well written! The same essence in a parallel problem. And yet we still “suppress” and “bring under control” and budget more money for next year because the problem that we have created will have grown one year bigger.
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Comment by montucky — August 1, 2017 @ 10:09 pm
Smoke in the air would make me so nervous. It did make an interesting photo though. How far away are you from the fires? A safe distance, I hope!
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Comment by Mama's Empty Nest — August 2, 2017 @ 9:00 am
This year (so far) I’ve been lucky. The fire in the distance is about 30 miles away and it is the closest at the moment. Over the next two days I should be getting some smoke from it though because there has been a shift in wind direction. Last year at this time there was a big one very close to here. Of course, everything can change in a moment if a thunderstorm comes through.
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Comment by montucky — August 2, 2017 @ 9:08 am
Awesome
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Comment by John Purdy — August 3, 2017 @ 3:21 pm
Awesome, and scary. There are no clouds in the photo, that’s all just smoke from one large fire which is burning about 20 miles from the peak from which the photo was taken.
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Comment by montucky — August 3, 2017 @ 3:34 pm
Sad. We’ve had a lot of fires this year, too. And flash floods caused by the fires.
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Comment by Candace — August 3, 2017 @ 5:19 pm
There are now 26 fires burning in Montana, but B.C. has a hundred! In the last two weeks we have lost two firefighters to fallen trees, one on each of two fires.
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Comment by montucky — August 3, 2017 @ 6:27 pm
I was just listening to NPR this afternoon and they mentioned how bad the fires in Montana are this year and that 2 firefighters had died. Very sad.
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Comment by Candace — August 3, 2017 @ 10:20 pm
Yes, very sad. One was a local young man, only 19, and the other was a veteran firefighter from California helping out here. Both were killed by falling snags. I remember being most apprehensive about trees like that, especially at night, when you could hear the tree snap off but couldn’t see where it was falling.
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Comment by montucky — August 3, 2017 @ 10:30 pm
I’ve been meaning to pass on this entry from the blog of one of your fellow Montanans. I thought it was such a good reminder of exactly who it is who’s fighting these fires. There are a lot of heros who never get a single mention, even though we owe them so much.
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Comment by shoreacres — August 4, 2017 @ 6:38 am
Thanks Linda. Thank Goodness there are still lots of folks just like that living quietly in our rural communities. There are very few people living in these small towns who haven’t spent some time on the fire lines or answering emergency calls. That’s what America is all about.
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Comment by montucky — August 4, 2017 @ 7:32 am
Oh dear .. that smoke looks like it must be a huge fire. Very sad
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Comment by Julie@frogpondfarm — August 4, 2017 @ 2:13 pm
That fire now covers 12,300 acres (or about 19 square miles), and it is believed that it will burn until the snows put it out.
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Comment by montucky — August 4, 2017 @ 2:28 pm
Oh that is terrible .. so sorry to hear that
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Comment by Julie@frogpondfarm — August 4, 2017 @ 7:18 pm
It is sad. We are beginning to pay dearly for all of the years suppressing small fires that otherwise would have disposed of much of the forest debris and nature has done for millions of years. The fires now are huge and numerous.
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Comment by montucky — August 4, 2017 @ 7:33 pm
Poetic phrasing … “the road to the lookout” makes me starry eyed … :))
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Comment by Teresa Evangeline — August 5, 2017 @ 10:26 am
It’s a lonesome road Teresa, but a peaceful one.
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Comment by montucky — August 5, 2017 @ 11:06 am