Forest Fires, Fireworks, and Flares.

            There be fires and then there be fires, as the pirates might say. 

 

One is a forest fire in a steep and deep canyon, carved out by the north fork of the American river over a scant few million years.  That fire started on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Shirttail Canyon some 40 miles east of Auburn, and four or five miles north of Foresthill.  When I lived in the former I worked in the latter.  The fire has been named, as fires are, The Robbers Fire after an outcropping of rock that had been called The Robber’s Roost when a group of outlaws holed up there after, well, robbing.  The name has been around the area for awhile.  There was even a long time out-of-business restaurant in Foresthill named The Robber’s Roost that the telephone company I worked for took over as offices.

Firefighters are hoping that the temperature drops, that the wind drops, and that the fire drops instead of climbing those steep canyon walls.  If that happens it would move faster than a man can run on flat ground, much less uphill, and would threaten homes in either Colfax or the aforementioned Foresthill, depending on which direction providence or God chooses it to go.  To say that the people in these mountain communities appreciate those who fight these fires would be like saying a drowning man might appreciate a boat.

There was a fire of a different kind in San Diego on The Forth of July.  Thousands were gathered around the bay, waiting for a fireworks show they all expected to be within spittin’ distance of spectacular.  It wasn’t.  In a computer glitch that was described, a bit snarkily if you ask me, as a “premature ignition” all of the fireworks went off at once.  I’ve seen the video and basically it’s a bright white light for maybe 15 seconds and then nada. 

When I was a young teen, my friend Mark used to get firecrackers by the brick.  If I remember correctly there are 1,000 in each brick and one day we decided to light off all of them at once.  After a couple of hundred or so went off, we got bored and decided to stop the train of popping and crackling and started stomping on the fuse ahead of the fire.  Kind of like those pirates might kick a line of black powder out of the way to keep that fuse from setting off further explosions.  I learned from this that good fireworks shows, like multi-course meals, need to be delivered slowly for complete enjoyment.  I don’t think stomping was an option for the pyrotechnicians in San Diego but I wouldn’t be surprised if next year’s show was triple-double checked, to borrow a phrase from basketball.

The third “fire” is extra-terrestrial in nature.  The fallout from a solar flare, a solar storm, is bombarding our little blue planet as I write this.  Part of the solar flare is known as a coronal mass ejection – a phrase that would surely provide more joke fodder for the headline writers of the San Diego fireworks articles – that sends a wave of solar plasma our way.  What does this plasma wave (solar storm) mean to us?  Not much.  For those in the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere it means some more impressive aurora borealis.  To the 2012’ers who are expecting an end of the world Christmas present, this is just one more step to untying the ribbon.

Scientists are obligated to tell us not to worry, like parents proving there are no monsters in the closet.  Solar flares while given a fiery name do not send fire our way; they send a magnetic field that “interacts” with the Earth’s magnetic field causing the prettier northern lights and possibly reaping havoc with satellites and perhaps power systems.  Those same scientists are telling us that our satellites will remain in orbit, beaming down ESPN and Ice Road Truckers uninterrupted, and our lights will stay on.

I’ve not read the resolution of the Robber’s Fire, the “Big Sputter” (my name) in San Diego will likely be rectified next year, and the solar storm, while passing through my body right now, has had little if any effect, although I wouldn’t mind superpowers.  Fire is a daily event on and around our planet since it was stolen from the gods and given to us by Prometheus.  We have choices on what to do with it: fight it, harness it, or endure it.  Probably the only thing we can’t do is ignore it.

Dear Mr. Zeus,

It’s been a pretty long time.  I was wondering if you might release Mr. Prometheus from his punishment of having his liver eaten by an eagle, then being regenerated only to be eaten again, over and over, for eternity.  I’m sure he’s been a model prisoner and is sorry for stealing fire and giving it to us.  Besides, look at all we’ve done with it, aside from the San Diego fireworks fiasco, gunpowder, and nuclear bombs.  On second thought, maybe that argument isn’t the way to go.  How about this?  Perhaps your eagle isn’t thrilled with an extremely steady diet of liver?  Have no field mice offended you?

Sincerely,

one human.