Fires

La niña left an impressive swath of snow in the high alpine environment that I've been inhabiting. My most recent 8 day hitch was the first that I hadn't encountered a snow field (see us trudging through one below).

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The designation of the summer solstice (arguably somewhere between the 20th and 22nd of June) has seemed farcical in what I have only ever experienced as the wet, terrible, mushy, rotten boots June that is Montana.

But this year it was like someone flipped a switch and summer came. Since the morning of June 21st when the sun rose to a FINALLY cloudless sky, I think that it has maybe rained 6 times, and these were only pitiful smatterings of water.

I never saw it coming but this has turned into one SUNNY and DRY summer and one of the more exciting fire years that I have ever experienced (I missed the 2007 season but I've heard so much about it that I get pangs of nostalgia for it).

My parents came along for a visit a few weeks ago and we toured the smoke jumping facility in Missoula. The jumpers were all stitching away at their chutes awaiting the sound of an alarm announcing their first jump of the season. Our rookie tour guide was looking hopefully at the skies saying (more to himself than us) "it will be any day now." Well his day arrived!! The first jump of the season came on the bitterroots and the second and third were both in MY DISTRICT on trails that I have worked/recreated on.

Anyway, I spent my week digging tread (meaning building new trail) with dry puffs of dust swirling up around me, all the while keeping myself entertained with my forest service radio. Listening to the smoke jumpers be deployed and then hearing their plane fly overhead feels exciting and nerve wracking- a little bit like sending people off to war. Or maybe I just entertain that kind of dramatic imagery when I need some excitement.

One thing is for sure, fires make for killer sunrises and entertaining radio.