{"id":6178,"date":"2013-12-21T11:49:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T18:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6178"},"modified":"2013-12-21T11:58:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T18:58:46","slug":"when-trees-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6178","title":{"rendered":"When Trees Disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, the background story.<\/strong> Back in 2011, I wrote about making an offering to Tlaloc, Southwestern god of the hydrological cycle (among other things), at a tiny mountain spring near my home.<\/a><\/p>\n

The spring is high on the side of a ridge, fed by that year’s snow and rain, which meant it often dries up in late summer.<\/p>\n

It had its guardian, a three-foot-long (92 cm) rattlesnake, whom I encountered several times.<\/a><\/p>\n

The area was thickly forested in ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and Gambel oak \u2014 too thickly, to my eye<\/em>. (This is what comes of being a forester’s son.) The pines were thick \u2014 in some places they lay like jackstraws, toppled by the chinook winds of winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When this slope burns, I thought, it will burn like a volcano. And it did, on October 23, 2012, a date seared into my memory.<\/p>\n

\"\"

October 23, 2012: The spring would be just left of the brightest area. My home is on the other side of the ridge.<\/p><\/div>\n

I took this photo at dusk, bracing my pocket camera against a corral post (one of the ones that was not burning like a candle) while waiting for the the fire engine I was working on to be re-filled with water at the landowner’s well. It was too windy for air tankers, too close to darkness for hand crews to hike up there, so it just burned, while I implored the west wind to keep pushing the fire away from my home.<\/p>\n

M. and I returned in November 2012 to see if we could find the little spring again with all the landmarks gone. <\/a>For instance, there was a boulder that I called Bonsai Rock because of the tenacious little evergreens growing out of cracks in the stone. Not anymore.<\/p>\n

Fisher the dog did what he does best, finding animal parts in the woods (including a bear cub’s paw) but even that activity seemed sadder.<\/p>\n

We returned again in May 2013 to make an offering at the spring<\/a>. During the previous month, the Bureau of Land Management had hired a contractor to re-seed the area with a grass mix by helicopter. The purpose was to get something growing and stabilize the slopes against the summer thunderstorms. It worked. We had adequate summer rains (not like the storms and flooding in northern Colorado), and by late summer the slopes were almost lush, as the photo below will show.<\/p>\n

\"bear<\/a>

October 2013: A bear cub drinks at the spring.<\/p><\/div>\n

I put my most expendable scout camera up there from late September until a couple of days ago \u2014 although the batteries died some time in November \u2014 which is how I got the photo. The best part is to see the spring running\u2014you can see water flowing down the right-hand edge of the photo.<\/p>\n

\"burn<\/a>

December 2013: Winter scene, with the spring off in the middle distance.<\/p><\/div>\n

All this is prelude to thinking about how an animistic\/polytheistic outlook copes with such changes to the land. No, it is not like someone paved it over and put up a Family Dollar store. Something will come back\u2014the scrubby Gambel oak has re-sprouted, and there were wildflowers last summer, but the ponderosa pine and Douglas fir will be much slower to return. I probably won’t see this valley forested again.<\/p>\n

I will never forget walking around a week or two after the fire, when the slopes just felt nuked<\/em>. Crows overhead were the only life\u2014the rattlesnake guardian almost certainly died, if tree roots were being burned underground.<\/p>\n

The little seasonal spring, however, remains as sort of natural shrine, a focus for hope and continuity, bear cubs and wild turkeys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, the background story. Back in 2011, I wrote about making an offering to Tlaloc, Southwestern god of the hydrological cycle (among other things), at a tiny mountain spring near my home. The spring is high on the side of a ridge, fed by that year’s snow and rain, which meant it often dries up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,23,211,81],"class_list":["post-6178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animism","tag-colorado","tag-fire","tag-wildlife"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1BE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12719,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12719","url_meta":{"origin":6178,"position":0},"title":"You May Be Celebrating Ostara, But Are You Vogue-ing Ostara?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Actually, this piece comes from the well-known British HPS, author, and academic Vivianne Crowley, and it is worth reading. On 20 March, druids, witches, and lovers of nature will gather to celebrate the spring equinox, one of the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year. For millennia, the spring\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"equinox\"","block_context":{"text":"equinox","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=equinox"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.vogue.co.uk\/photos\/6230ca62965d1c9a61336071\/2%3A3\/w_2240%2Cc_limit\/CNSTMMGLPICT000002405248.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8008,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8008","url_meta":{"origin":6178,"position":1},"title":"Celebrating Spring, Red Rocks, and Wine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I look outside today and see a white landscape, with light snow falling and a couple of hungry humingbirds huddled on the sugar-water feeder like barflies staring into their whiskey glasses. Yes, it's a typical May Day in the Colorado foothills. Is any surprise that Colorado's biggest public Beltane festival\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bennett Price","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Bennett-Price.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Bennett-Price.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Bennett-Price.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5529,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5529","url_meta":{"origin":6178,"position":2},"title":"An Offering to Tlaloc in the Burned-Over Forest","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week M. and I climbed over the ridge to \"Camera Trap Spring\" (our personal name for it) to leave an offering to Tlaloc. Thing have changed a little bit since a year ago. The ground is black with ash. Stones have cracked from the heat of a forest fire.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bioregion\"","block_context":{"text":"bioregion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=bioregion"},"img":{"alt_text":"offering_at_spring_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12111,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12111","url_meta":{"origin":6178,"position":3},"title":"Happy Ostara, and It’s Going to Snow","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"March 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"R\u0119kawka is a celebration held in Krakow the Tuesday after Easter, so loosely speaking, it is a spring equinox festival. My friend in Krakow calls it \"a civic holiday with Pagan roots.\" R\u0119kawka is also one name for the tumulus (artificial mound) in the video. The celebration has long included\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"equinox\"","block_context":{"text":"equinox","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=equinox"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12715,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12715","url_meta":{"origin":6178,"position":5},"title":"Celebrating Spring with a Castle-Burning","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 17, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan writer Rhyd Wildermuth, now living in the Ardennes Forest, or as he prefers, \"The Forests of Arduinna,\" offers this video of a local end-of-winter celebration called Buergbrennen (castle-burning). He sees it as an ancient Pagan celebration taken over by the Christian church. Maybe so. Or maybe some Luxembourgish Ronald\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"equinox\"","block_context":{"text":"equinox","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=equinox"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6178"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6193,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions\/6193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}