We had a fire in the Rio Grande bosque just before the 4th of July...the bosque is a long, thin sprip of forest that runs along the river and goes through the center of Albuquerque...started by three teens that wanted to see what happened when you toss firecrackers into a pile of cottonwood seeds. What they got was an instant crown fire. Nobody was hurt, and it was out within two days, but about 25 homeless folks who lived in the woods were permanently displaced. Total loss was under 1000 acres, but that's a good bit when you're talking about a forest that's less than a quarter-mile across. It was 6-7 miles from where I live, but only 1/4 mile from where I was volunteering the day it began-and a crowning fire is very impressive at that distance.

There have been some positive results. The city and state have both promised to put some effort and money into bosque restoration. That translates to removing the giant metal jacks left over from the "wild river" days, so fire-fighting equipment can get through, and cleaning out a lot of the undergrowth, which the various tree-hugger groups (and I belong to a couple) have been pushing for years. A lot of that is fire-prone and thirsty "alien" plants, like the Russian olive and salt cedar/tamarisk. We may even end up with a river that's a little less tame...the cottonwoods can't reproduce without occasional flooding.