This weekend celebrations are being held to mark the 50th anniversary of Grand Teton National Park. There have been many activities and dignitaries about, as well as media stories about how difficult a struggle it was to achieve its status as a protected piece of heritage.(Even then the ranchers were crying about public lands being kept public.)

This weekend, also, the West has been ablaze, and we lost a firefighter on the Wind River Indian Rservation when the fire engulfed the fire truck he was in. So far, six firefighters have been lost to the fires of the West. Estimates say that we will eventually see almost twice the acreage burned throughout the West this year as was lost in the great Yellowstone fire a few years back, which was around 4 million.

Thursday night, lightening struck the prairie northeast of town and within a few hours 25,000 acres were ashes.

On Saturday, we went for a drive up and around behind Casper Mountain and surveyed the many thousands of acres lost to fire a couple of weeks ago. It was strange with patches of green in stark contrast to the skeletal remains of juniper trees, lodgepole pine, and sagebrush.

Now, there are firefighters from New Zealand and Australia coming up to help as the Canadians have done. I am grateful for them. I would also like to know how it is that this great country is so ill-equipped that there are not enough people and tools to go around to fight all of these fires; some are being let to burn with no firefighting at all due to lack of resources.

Weeks of smoke in the air, terror in hearts when lightening comes near and sirens are heard...

everyone is on edge....please send some thoughts and prayers for all involved...it seems the West is literally going up in smoke...like one of those old Western movies which would show a fast-moving prairie grass fire threatening some poor farmer's shanty...the fire would burn across the entire screen, women and children would scream and run in terror, while men beat at it with their jackets, leading horses and hitching up wagons, and in the end, the hero, Alan Ladd, Jimmie Stewart, whomever, would wipe their brow and gaze out afar across the land and pledge to rebuild a bigger and better life....

here's to all out there beating with their "jackets" and to the poor critters caught up in the rush, as well as the families who've lost their heros.

May the West find relief through the rains of Mother Nature....thanks,

kat