Winds Of Change

We have too many federal bureaucracies and federal environmental laws along with too many environmental groups that spin garbage. We don't always agree with them on sensible balance.  How far should we go to alter nature for our benefit?  Do we have 'to control' everything?  I read a historical novel a few months ago, 'The Winds of Change'.  It was interesting, well written and the author managed to voice his philosophy on this subject.  He mentioned that historically the mountain area contained 30-40 pine trees per acre and now we have 300-400 per acre.  The argument for controlled burns and back burns versus the forest have managed without any help from humans for thousands of years continues.  The 1988 Yellowstone Park fire was considered a catastrophe.  Many feel that we have another catastrophe waiting with the trees killed at epidemic level by the mountain pine beetle and until this year drought conditions.  We can't stop the earthquakes, lightening, tornadoes and other acts of nature but sometimes we don't have to intervene.  Nature does it for us in the form of a microburst.  Wikipedia has an excellent description of a microburst that hit us on June 30th and took out 20 very big pines in less than eight minutes.  We often say that if you don't like the weather, just wait because it will change in a few minutes in the Rocky Mountains.  All the photos are weather that happened in less than 30 days. Colorado's surface is not flat and nothing is as close as it looks but it has glorious scenery and sometimes weather. When I think about it, the mountain men (before Lewis and Clark) that came to the mountains to trap fur were the ones that had it tough!

P.S. To see how we cleared out 20 very big pines in exactly three weeks - follow the blog