Dutch Oven Cooking: Food Heaven

    Last year, my husband hosted a Dutch-oven workshop through his job as public education manager for his agency. Dutch ovens are those big, cast-iron cooking pots with heavy lids that you can use in your own kitchen, or, in this case, your backyard, on a camping trip, or just for fun. You use hot charcoals in a calculated manner to obtain the proper heat to cook your bread, casserole, or desserts. The workshop was such a hit, he hosted another one this past weekend, which I attended.
   The workshop instructors were this couple, a work colleague of my husband and his wife. Russ Richins has cooked with Dutch ovens for decades, and he and his wife Susan have a catering business, the Rockin RR Chuckwagon where they cook for large groups as well as hold workshops on Dutch oven cooking throughout the state and the Southwest. Their interest has led them to enter multiple Dutch oven cook-offs and contests as well. Due to these activities, between teaching, catering, and contesting, they have amassed dozens of Dutch ovens, cooking utensils, supplies, tables, etc. and they cart this heavy stuff with them everywhere. I believe they have a separate garage for all their supplies, as the volume easily surpasses your average wagon train of cowboys. Simply put, they know their stuff.

   After an initial overview of what exactly is a Dutch oven and what you can do with them (practically anything that is cooked can be cooked in a Dutch oven, including roasting a turkey and making pizza), we ventured outside to the cooking tables, where, paired up, we each made some sort of bread dough. Given the time the bread needs to rise, be punched, then rise again, we had to get started on that. Bread dough is pretty simple, and every pair had a different recipe. I partnered with my friend Sherrie, and we made "Faux Braided Bread." Breads made by others included sourdough, honey wheat, cinnamon buns, and French.

   After kneading the dough and covering it to let rise, we gathered together inside again to hear more about Dutch oven cooking--how to clean the ovens (NO SOAP!!), how to season them, tools to make your life easier as you handle hot coals, and how to calculate getting the exact number of charcoal briquettes to heat an oven to 325 degrees, 350, 400, etc. Yes, math is involved, but only whole numbers and only adding/subtracting; it's not tough. Adjustments are generally made for high-elevation cooking (like where we live). Handles to pick up Dutch oven lids must keep the lids balanced (otherwise coals fall into your food), and they must be long to keep your hands away from the heat. It's really quite an art. You can toss a bunch of coals on the top and bottom of your oven, but without calculating the right amount, you'll undercook or burn your food.

   After the bread rose, we went out again and formed our bread into our loaves, and did what we needed to do to finish our bread. In our case, the Faux Braid, we rolled the dough into a long strip, added some strawberry jam down the middle, and cut these strips on each side, pulling them over each other to make a "faux" braid.

Roll out, add jam, and slice edges at an angle

"Braid" the strips over the top

The finished Faux Braid prior to baking

   We then had to let our breads rise a second time for about 45 minutes, so at that point, the instructors got the coals going, and we made our second dish. Some pairs made desserts and some made casseroles/main dishes. We made a Beef and Green Chile Casserole, which included browned hamburger, green chile enchilada sauce, and a ton of cheese, all layered in between a bunch of tortillas. Sherrie added jalapeno chiles on one side for the adventurous participants who may want more heat to their green chile.

You can tell this hasn't been cooked yet;
Sherrie isn't wearing gloves!

   Then, the heat was really turned on. By now, it was about 2:00 p.m., we were starving, the coals were hot, and our ovens were packed with food ready to be cooked. We placed the proper amount of coals above and below our Dutch ovens, and while our casseroles, breads, and desserts cooked, we cleaned up and salivated over what was to come.

   Ahh, and what came? Well, here is our cooked Beef and Green Chile Casserole:

  
   And our Faux Braid Bread:

   Other dishes prepared included an upside-down pizza, a hash-brown/sausage/cheese casserole, a pineapple side dish, a creamed corn bread side dish, a chicken enchilada pie, a "Cheeky Cherry" cake, and of course our many breads. Lots of cheese, lots of bread, lots of meat--DEEE-LISH!!!

  We laid everything out on a long table, served it up, ate until we filled up like ticks, and then.....the clean up. Coals, ash, scraping the ovens, washing up, and helping break down all the equipment; it was good exercise after all that incredible food.

  How much did we eat? Well, each pair made a complete casserole or dessert, plus two loaves of whatever bread. We each kept a loaf of our bread to split up and take home, and we served our other loaf to the group. Other than the bread, do you think we had leftovers???? Well, we did, but I have to say, we didn't have much! I think I brought home a couple spoonfuls of two desserts, a spoonful of the sausage/hashbrown dish, and a spoonful of the corn casserole. We pigged out, that's for sure.

   Bruce and I are now thinking of having a Dutch oven party over Labor Day; we have a number of friends who occasionally cook with Dutch ovens, so why not? It's a blast, you made an incredible amount of incredible food--what's not to love?

   In case you're interested, here are the recipes for our casserole and bread (bread recipe to be added at a later date when I locate it). Don't forget, you don't need a Dutch oven to cook these; they can be cooked in a casserole dish (for the casserole) and/or cookie sheet (for the bread):

Beef and Green Chile Casserole:

2 lbs browned ground beef
1 large can green enchilada sauce
12 corn tortillas
Shredded cheese
(add whatever you want; black beans, corn, tomatoes, onions)

Spoon and spread a small bit of enchilada sauce on the bottom of your 14" Dutch oven. Layer some of the corn tortillas at the bottom, then layer some of the ground beef, cheese, sauce. Repeat until gone; add shredded cheese on top. Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly on top. We recommend using light or low-fat cheese as to not get that layer of oil that sometimes occurs with regular cheese.

Faux Braided Bread:

Coming soon-----

Doing the Hummingbird Shuffle

     Arizona is considered to be the "hummingbird capital" of the United States. That is certainly so in the southeastern part of the state where up to 15 species can be found, more than anywhere else in North America. Up here in the mountains, however, we have four "regular" species, and occasionally one or two more. At our house, we get all four: broad-tailed, which are the first to show up in spring and are breeders here; black-chinned and calliope, two species that show up off and on throughout the summer; and then...we have the rufous hummingbird (cue the "Psycho" shower scene music).
    Prior to the 4th of July holiday, feeding hummingbirds is a gentle pastime; our sweet little broad-taileds, black-chinned, and calliope (the smallest of our North American hummingbirds) don't suck up too much nectar. A couple feeders on the back deck, maybe one on the front porch, need to be filled up about once a week. No problem. They follow the rules of kindergarten: share and share alike and treat others as you would want to be treated.

A sentry keeping watch over his feeder

   Then, on July 4th, the fireworks begin. I'm not talking about the chemically-engineered, rocket-launching light show. I'm talking rufous hummingbirds. Done breeding in the Pacific Northwest, western Canada, and Alaska, these fire-colored beasties are actually on their migration trip to southern Mexico for winter. They are, literally, our first sign of fall, a somber thought on the July 4th weekend. They also arrive en masse, and begin to completely disrupt our lives. Keeping our hummingbirds fed becomes a job for both morning and evening, every day. Not only that, rufous's are known for their territorial behavior. They "adopt" a feeder as their own, and dive-bomb every other hummingbird that dares to take a sip.

     But it's not only which feeders are protected on a daily basis (and that changes every day, depending on the birds present and which feeders look unusually enticing for which overseer bird), it's the sheer numbers of hummingbirds that park themselves in our yard over the course of about two and a half months that literally rule our lives.

     We get dozens. And dozens. Sometimes it feels like hundreds. We've had years where we can see dozens of hummingbirds using each feeder. And we put out something like 7 feeders. Each little hole on the feeder, or port, has a bird sipping from it, plus there are birds buzzing around each feeder waiting their turn. Sometimes there are two birds for each port. It's nuts.

     So this is my day. I wake up super early because we have to put the feeders out before first light. You can hear the birds start to wake up around 5 a.m. The "Angry Birds" app has nothing on these birds when they wake up and there is no nectar. We keep the feeders indoors overnight because we occasionally get bears in the yard, and they're attracted to not only our seed feeders, but to these nectar feeders as well. So every night, we take the feeders down and bring them indoors. In the morning, I schlep feeders out, all seven or possibly even eight or nine, which I fill every morning with nectar. Let's say 7 feeders at four cups of nectar per feeder; that equals 1.75 gallons. I then tromp back inside (and this is before my morning coffee), and make a couple more gallons of nectar. Please note that two gallons of nectar requires EIGHT CUPS of sugar. Every day, or at least just about every day. I then go to work.

   I come home from work, greeted happily by my dog, but I can't even take the time to pet her, because many of the hummingbird feeders are empty, and the Angry Birds are making alot of noise. I toss my purse and work stuff on the counter and rush outside to figure out which feeders on that day are "guarded" by one little rufous hummer and still have nectar in them, and move those to where the empty feeders are, switching them out. I then put a little bit of nectar in the empty feeders, just enough to get them through the evening rush. After darkness, ah the blessed darkness, falls and the birds quiet down, I schlep the feeders back into the house and the cycle begins anew the next morning at 5:00. I call it "doing the hummingbird shuffle," as I feel like it's like a little dance, but it 's really more than that. It's like being forced at gunpoint to dance; you're sort of panic-stricken because you have dozens of feisty hummingbirds buzzing around complaining about the empty feeders, some need to be moved to certain spots, others need to be filled; and each day, the dance is slightly different.

Bees!!! What a pain!!!!

    So why do we do it? Well, despite the panic-stricken daily feeding shuffle, the time it takes to make two gallons of nectar each day, the space in the fridge taken up by gallon jugs of nectar, the empty replacement feeders either drying in the dish rack or strewn around our kitchen island making a mess, the sugar we have to buy in 25-lb bags at Costco, and the damn bees that sometimes take over a feeder (and are a totally different story), it is a marvel. Lazing over breakfast on the back deck while dozens upon dozens of hummingbirds go about their daily business, fighting, exploring your flowers, perching on the funniest places to lord over their protected feeder (tops of chairs; the top corner of a chain-link fence), doing their mating ritual dive-bombs, and more make our world just that much richer and fascinating. You gotta love hummingbirds. They are the toughest little creatures with the heart, and fierceness, of a lion. If they were our size, none of us would probably ever leave our houses out of abject fear.

    By mid-September, they start getting a move on, and slowly the numbers decrease. Feeding is less of a frenzy, and gets back to a reasonable pace. It's almost a relief, but not quite. I miss them, and I know that winter is on its way, and I simply can not wait for next year's insanity.

     I was able to finally get some videos uploaded. Here you go:

Gardening Part 6: Oh my gosh! Want some squash???

     When I last wrote, we were fretting about our garden. We still fret, but now it's more geared towards "what are we going to do with all this ___?" (fill in: squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, other). What a difference six weeks make. We still have lettuce and spinach issues, and our carrots, beets, and radishes are questionable, but my gosh, do we have squash.

     We learn something new every day with this garden. Maybe our lettuce, spinach, and such aren't doing so well because our soil is too acidic? Our mulch, which we mixed in with the fish-hatchery dirt, was chipped pine needles. We will need to do a pH test on the soil, but if it's acidic, then why are the other four beds taking off like mad?
     We also learned that you shouldn't direct-sow your seeds when you're freshly frustrated from your lousy experiment with growing seedlings indoors, because you tend to sow them about every three inches to make sure you have SOMETHING. You may want to re-think the placement of that many seeds, because they DO actually grow, and you become stuck with a jungle.
     We learned that pruning is mentally tough--thinning out carrots means you're tossing some potentially decent future vegetable, and I don't know about you, but I feel bad doing that.
     We learned that it may not be a good thing to stick a tiny little zucchini plant in between your tomatoes, because it outgrows and shades everything around it.
      We learned that patty-pan type squash doesn't grow nearly as quickly as yellow squash and zucchini, but the plant's leaves are gigantically huge.
      We learned that one needs lots of zucchini recipes on hand.

     What else? Well, our snap peas are coming in, and they are tasty, but unlike our zucchini, we don't seem to have enough in bulk to pick what we need for a full dinner's side dish. Next year, more are in order. The green beans have leafed out nicely, but no beans are even starting yet (where are you?? we're waaaiiittting....). Tomatoes as always try our patience, we want them so bad, and they take their time getting ripe. Thank god for cherry tomatoes, we've been harvesting those, and our Early Girls have barely started coming in, but they're coming.

Let's get to some photos:












Left: The beginnings of lettuce. Green and red leaf. I don't know if these will work out this year since we planted them late; they may bolt before they get good. Our original spinach bolted when the leaves were only about an inch long.

Above right, our radishes. The skimpy row on the right was our first sowing in late May when it froze that night, and the nice line on the left is our latest batch.

 Look at these squash plants!!! They're enormous! Zucchini in the front of the foremost bed; in the rear bed we have yellow squash on the left, and the right-most plant is the patty-pan squash, which is bigger than the others but still barely starting to produce. The rear bed also has our trellis of green pole beans.

Below is a wider view of the other beds, showing the tomato bed in front of the squashes. You can see the one zucchini we planted as a little thing in between the tomatoes. What were we thinking? We needed one more zucchini???

Take a look in the upper right corner of the above photo. That bed is our cucumber / snap pea bed. The cucumbers are taking over, we have so many of them. I've never seen a "young" cuke, but they're starting to grow. They look like little baby dills, which of course isn't surprising, but I was surprised at how "prickly" they are; they're not the most friendly of vegetables:

May as well throw in close-ups of our squash, peas, and tomatoes too:

 Outside our garden, we planted veggies throughout our yard. We have an old strawberry bed where we planted two tomatoes (our Early Girl and a cherry), a zucchini plant (my god, what WERE we thinking), and a few leftover radish seeds.

       You can barely see the cherry tomato (behind the zucchini) or the radishes, but they're there.

Then, we have three more containers; a whiskey-barrel with more pole beans, a container with just basil, and an herb garden:

I've used the parsley regularly, and now that our tomatoes are coming in, I am using more basil. Need to figure out some things to do with the cilantro; I don't cook Mexican food very often, but I think I can make some cilantro pesto.

Speaking of making food, here are a few recipes I've either copied or invented may be of interest to you:

Sauteed Italian Vegetables:
Slice zucchini, and start sauteeing it in a pan with a bit of olive oil. Add garlic if desired. When it starts softening up, add sliced onion. When nearly done, add mushrooms and cook a little more. Then, add cherry tomatoes or other kind of fresh tomato (chop if using regular-sized tomatoes); cook until heated through/softened. Add fresh basil (and parsley if you have it), sea salt, and pepper. Top with diced pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese (or use feta cheese), and serve as a nice side dish. If you don't have fresh basil, just add some pesto and mix in thoroughly.

Caprese "Salad":
Slice fresh tomatoes, chop basil, and dice up fresh mozzarella cheese. Mix together, and stir in a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Serve room temperature or slightly chilled.

Roasted Beet Salad:
Wash and trim beets (don't peel). Place in foil packet with a splash of olive oil, and roast for about an hour at 400 degrees. Let cool, and squeeze off beet skin, which comes off pretty easily when beets are cooked. Chop into bite-sized pieces and place in a bowl. Stir in a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, a spoonful of brown sugar, some ground cloves, and some sea salt. Serve as either a cold salad or at room temperature; a great side dish.

Simple Shredded Zucchini:
Spray a saute pan with Pam. Shred zucchini into the pan. Cook on medium, stirring occasionally, until zucchini cooks. Add garlic salt and shredded cheese just prior to serving. Let cheese melt on top.

I took the above pictures probably two days ago. Today, when I visited the garden after work, it had grown even more. The cucumbers were almost scary. The zucchini--I swear, three days ago there was one ready for picking and I could barely see any others. Now there is about 4 more ready to be picked. My gosh, want some squash?

Gardening Part 5: Mary, Mary, quite contrary, why doesn't my garden grow?



     What is so hard about lettuce and spinach? Everyone I talk to seems to be able to grow lettuce and spinach no problem. "I plant seeds in the fall and I have bunches ready to go right NOW!" "I plant on St. Patrick's Day, and I have bunches ready to go right NOW!" OK, fine, you can plant these seeds while it's still cool or gets below freezing at night. We did that. We actually got some seeds to pop up, both leaf lettuce varieties and our spinach. Little dime-sized lettuce leaves and 2" long spiky spinach leaves. We were excited, thinking we were masters of the universe of gardening. Then, there they sat. Not growing. Then, after a couple weeks of not budging in size, they started to slowly wilt. First, the lettuce went. It just wilted into lettuce-vapor, and went away. The spinach was almost worse, because you can still see it.

Sad, sad spinach

     What went wrong? We're still trying to figure that one out. Meanwhile, back at the snap peas and pole beans, the seedlings we so tenderly cared for in the house, gently planting after the freeze was gone and babied endlessly--well, probably 75% of them are gone. Maybe two cucumbers lived out of about a dozen. Even the zucchini, the stawart of the soil, the vegetable that everyone brings to the office because they are overloaded; even most of those seedlings failed. ???????

      The next step, then, was to basically buy starters for some vegetables, and just pop seeds into the garden beds, knowing we'll have a late harvest, for others. Doing both was like eating sand; it was exactly what we tried to avoid when we invested in starting from seed. We had no choice. I found some wonderful zucchini and yellow squash starters at a local nursery, and starter tomatoes (which we had always planned on doing) and cucumbers from our Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmer, Lorraine, who runs Moonrise Farm. We still had some cucumber seeds (along with pole beans and snap peas), and I went crazy, poking seeds wherever I could. I figured what the heck, with the mortality we've been experiencing, the more the better. So here's where we stand:

Pole beans and snap peas, some stragglers from our seedlings and those growing from seeds we planted:

Pole beans, both the leggy seeds that were
started indoors, and two from direct sowing, which look
alot better!

Snap peas, again, a few stragglers from our effort of starting seeds indoors, and from direct sowing into the garden bed:



 Cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash:

 Yellow summer squash from starters bought at a local nursery. They look great!









Cucumbers, from starters (on the left), and cukes, started from direct sowing, on the right.











And, one zucchini that made it through our seed-starting experiment. We didn't think it'd make it, so we stuck it in our tomato bed just for kicks, and it's a survivor.





      So, there you have a description of our more troublesome vegetables. There are a few bright spots, though. One is our short row of radishes, and our second planting of them (last weekend), starting to pop up. Radishes = easy. Then, our tomatoes seem to be plugging along; all have flowers, and three or four of them have little green balls of jucy goodness getting ready to be part of a BLT sandwich:

Radishes, from big to small

     We can't forget our flowers. We have perennials going (like the below photos of larkspur and some sort of Salvia species), they will likely peak at the end of this month, with others to follow. And, we also plant a fair share of annuals for color, including two whiskey barrels that flank our garage, and containers/pots everywhere, most on our back deck. Here are a few samples of all:

Annuals, bright spots on either side of our garage

Delphinium (Larkspur) just getting going;
Red-hot pokers int he background.

Some sort of Salvia that for some reason took over
one side of our pond. The color here is not what you
really see; they are a beautiful lavender/purple color
that carpets the ground.

Clematis vine; obviously we love purple!

     That's the status of our garden and yard. We are learning from our disappointments (spinach, lettuce especially), and think that part of the reason is that we simply had a late start to our garden this year due to it being our first year and things simply had to be built; a windy, windy spring that continues well into the summer (witness our horrible fire season this year), and in general, pretty cold temperatures.

     Speaking of fires, we are still dealing with the Wallow fire up here, with the Monument fire going strong outside of Sierra Vista, and the final days of the Horseshoe Two fire getting contained in the incredible Chiricahua mountains. The Wallow is now over 500,000 acres (it is staggering); the Horseshoe Two is over 200,000 acres, and the Monument reached the 20,000-acre mark today. I had an opportunity to get into part of the burned area this past week, visiting Alpine and Nutrioso. It is a mix of bad and uncanny good luck. One thing that is apparent, however, is that our thinning treatments have worked immensely around the communities that we treated, virtually saving all from no doubt an even greater loss of homes. Forest restoration is a complex issue, and I am now even more impassioned to do something about it. I have a few photos, but they are technically through my employer, so I will not post them here, but if you have a chance, you can visit here to see an interview I did for our website, and here to find out a bit more about the fire's anticipated impacts to wildlife. And, if you have an interest, my husband ventured into the world of "social media" this past weekend and started a Facebook page for the Arizona Game & Fish Department's Pinetop office (search "Arizona Game and Fish Pinetop Region") or go here to get to it, and please, "like" it! It needs friends! The page offers up all regional wildlife information related to the Wallow fire as well as general information on what's happening in the region.

     My next blog entry may end up being a longer one devoted to the recovery effort following the Wallow fire. Depends on what I feel like writing about. Suffice it to say, dealing with this fire has consumed both Bruce's and my life for the past three weeks, which is one of the reasons I haven't had time to write a blog entry. Media interviews, helping with the recovery effort, assessing damages, outreach efforts, and even working with our Senator and Congressional representative staffers to help make the point that our forests are important, and they must be restored. We have a long way to go. It is an exhausting process, and coming home to a garden (even though it has its challenges), our flowers, and our dog, who loves us despite our brown thumbs, reminds us that it is good to have a home, and to chase life and hold on to it whenever you can.







Earth, Wind, and Fire: Struggles with gardening and wildfire

     Over Memorial Day weekend, Bruce and I made a command decision that our seedlings, which have been growing wildly and becoming rather high-maintenance, had to get into the ground. Period. They were getting too "leggy," turning slightly yellow at the leaf-tips, and generally becoming a pain. That Saturday, however, it was really windy. People who don't live in northern Arizona don't understand what that means. I'm talking seriously windy, red-flag alerts, 30-40 mph sustained, gusts up to 50 mph, etc etc. Common for our spring weather, but generally these winds subside by Memorial Day, certainly by June. Not this year. We put off planting on Saturday, knowing that these leggy babies would be blown over and dead within an hour. Sunday, the wind was worse. Again we waited. Monday, well, that was it. The wind did subside a bit, and we got everything in the ground, and propped up the leggiest of them with pipe cleaners.

     

     We were quite excited, our garden was basically planted!!! After months of preparation, we were ready to go. Snap peas, pole beans, zucchini, yellow squash, butternet squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers were carefully tucked into the ground, watered, and fertilized. These would be added to our already-planted radishes, carrots, beets, spinach, and lettuce, which had started to sprout:

Spinach! Grow baby grow!

     Monday night rolled around, and sure enough, it got down to 30 degrees. The next day, panicked, we apprehensively tiptoed to the garden, but it appeared that most everything made it through. Over the rest of this past week, however, the wind never subsided, and perhaps combined with that touch of freezing weather, most of our snap peas are gone, several pole beans, nearly all of our cucumbers (we're down to two or three out of 11), most of our yellow squash, and most of our zucchini. Gone. I'm too sad to even take pictures! Suffice it to say, I had to rocket around town visiting anywhere that has plants, and picked up a few each of zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber. We'll be planting our snap peas directly from seed, which we still have, and we have some last germinating pole beans we'll use to fill in the gaps. But again, we must wait; the winds have not subsided in the least and we're beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as TMW syndrome (Too Much Wind); didn't pioneers go nuts in Kansas because of the wind? Is there a pill I can take? Needless to say, we're a little sad to see that our seedling experiment just didn't quite work out.

     Over this same windy Memorial Day weekend, a couple campers tenting out in the Bear Wallow Wilderness of the Apache National Forest, east of our home, started a campfire. While it was a red-flag warning day, the Forest eased up on campfire restrictions for the weekend, probably assuming that most people would use their heads and perhaps be extra cautious about managing their fires. Bad assumption; never assume people actually think about what they do. These campers left their fire smoldering in the morning, and took off on a hike. From that brainless action, the Wallow Fire kicked in gear on Sunday, May 30. As of June 4, it is now the 3rd largest wildfire in Arizona history (our 2002 Rodeo-Chediski, to the west of us, was the largest). This fire has hit both Bruce and I harder than the R-C, even though the R-C came within about 10 miles of our house and we experienced the mandatory evacuation that others are now going through. 

     It's hit us hard because the Wallow Fire is burning in probably the most scenic spot in our White Mountains--and one of the most scenic places in the state. Mixed-conifer forests, creeks, meadows, rolling mountains--all are a welcome respite to not only desert-dwellers who come up here by the thousands each weekend to cool off, but also to the people who live here year-round. Williamson Valley, Mount Baldy, the West and East Forks of the Black River as they flow through canyons packed with spruces, aspens, and firs...it is, or I should say was, just plain gorgeous. Even more so given that most people have no clue a place like this exists in Arizona of all places. Almost every Arizonan who has lived here for any good length of time has memories of fishing, camping, and hiking in the Alpine/Hannagan Meadow areas. And now, this special place has been consumed by one of the most intense wildfires ever experienced in Arizona. To date, nearly a week later, there is no containment, and the fire is anticipated to possibly make it into Greer, get to Mt. Escudilla, and points north and eastward. People in Albuquerque and even Colorado Springs are experiencing smoke from this fire. If you want to take a look at some eye-opening photos, visit Wallow fire pics.    

     Bruce reports from his work connections that at least two, now possibly three, wolf dens with pups who had not yet been weaned have been burned over. Wild-born wolf pups are the key to a successful Mexican gray wolf reintroduction, and this is a major hit. Nesting songbirds and raptors likely lost all their young; it's still too early for birds to have fledged. To say nothing of their nesting habitat, which has now been decimated for the foreseeable future.

     It has been depressing to say the least. To my friends I know fighting this fire, I say thank you and please stay safe. It's amazing how we all pull together at times like this, too. Several towns are offering their school gyms as Red Cross shelters. County fairgrounds and other areas have opened up their facilities for people to bring livestock, horses, and other pets, where they will receive free food and care.



The White Mountains in the early morning mist, pre-fire

      So, between garden problems, this devastating fire, and the wind which seems to just not quit, it's been a week to ponder about disasters, our role in our world, and how much power nature has--from affecting snap pea seedlings to capitalizing on fuel loads, low humidity, and wind to become a ferocious conflagration that no human can control. I have a hole in my soul this weekend, knowing that a part of my world is forever changed; will I even want to re-visit this favorite place of mine, only to see the fire's aftermath? Who were these stupid, stupid people who couldn't douse their fire on a windy day, and now have affected so many people and creatures, including birds, wolves, elk, deer, bears, weasels, mice, fish, and countless other species that make up the fabric of our wild lands?

      To cap it off, and perhaps as a karmic ploy from our friend Fate, the next movie in our Netflix queue that arrived early this past week was "Avatar." Months ago, I added that movie to our queue, since we were probably two of only, what, 14 people in the world who hadn't seen that movie. I had no idea when it would reach the top of our queue, but here it was, showing up during our very depressing week. I guess many of you know the theme of the movie--ongoing destruction of a planet by one species and a violent takeover by said species of another planet for a natural resource they need, with no regard for the impacts to that second planet. Will we continue to make the same mistakes, over and over? I guess there will always be people who don't understand that what they do, a simple thing, maybe one that if done on any other day wouldn't have the same affect, can ripple into the history books (and not in a good way). A decision to lift fire restrictions, an unattended campfire, planting seedlings knowing their vulnerability in the wind--all lead to unintended consequences that, in the case of the Wallow fire, will last hundreds of years. Our garden will survive, and I know we'll learn from our mistakes and do things differently next year; but will the next camper learn? The next?

Wallow fire plume from Sunrise Lake
Photo by Barbara L. Davis

Wallow fire plume from A-1 Lake, approx. 40 miles away
Photo by Barbara L. Davis