Wildfires
This is the most I've ever paid attention to the wildfires that commonly occur every sodding summer here in Southern California. The reason I have? Well, because it's on my sodding back door. For the past several nights, whenever I get off the Gold Line at Allen Station, I have been able to see the flames that belch out the smoke that spread across the sky above the foothills. I can smell the smoke. I'm breathing it in. It's seeping into my skin. And the bright orange - nearly crimson - flames dance in the mountains at night, beacons of danger.
August pushed some seriously heavy hot temperatures at the end of its month, like it was making up for being inconsistent, and September is deciding to do the opposite, start strong first.
Homes are swallowed by these fires. Not just the homes of people, but of animals as well. The length and breadth of the fires can be felt and smelled all around. Now, I understand that the chaparral system we live in calls for a little fire every so often. That's just how it is. Nature does it for itself; however, it's plainly obvious, with the wildfires every year, that the nature we live near is suffering from the hands of humans, and when it suffers, we suffer.
Every time there's a wildfire, I always get pissed off at people. Badly maintained campfires. The idle cigarette flicked out the window instead of smothered out in the ashtray, the old machinery, and the teenagers or drunk tards being fuckheads. Whatever the cause, it's almost certainly something done by man.
It's also extremely depressing.
Even more, you're going to see the repercussions come and bite us in the ass when the rains manage to sluggishly make their way here at the end of the year. We'll probably end up with below average rainfall, but it'll still cause some serious mudslides. People living in the foothills will have to depend on the firefighters and others to get sandbags put up or dig trenches or who knows what else. They better start preparing now, because all that topsoil and all that ash and char and ruin is going to come sliding down the mountains and slamming against everything at the bottom.
We reap what we sow. We gotta respect the nature near us, and if we don't, we'll feel it buffet us with wreckage and destruction.
August pushed some seriously heavy hot temperatures at the end of its month, like it was making up for being inconsistent, and September is deciding to do the opposite, start strong first.
Homes are swallowed by these fires. Not just the homes of people, but of animals as well. The length and breadth of the fires can be felt and smelled all around. Now, I understand that the chaparral system we live in calls for a little fire every so often. That's just how it is. Nature does it for itself; however, it's plainly obvious, with the wildfires every year, that the nature we live near is suffering from the hands of humans, and when it suffers, we suffer.
Every time there's a wildfire, I always get pissed off at people. Badly maintained campfires. The idle cigarette flicked out the window instead of smothered out in the ashtray, the old machinery, and the teenagers or drunk tards being fuckheads. Whatever the cause, it's almost certainly something done by man.
It's also extremely depressing.
Even more, you're going to see the repercussions come and bite us in the ass when the rains manage to sluggishly make their way here at the end of the year. We'll probably end up with below average rainfall, but it'll still cause some serious mudslides. People living in the foothills will have to depend on the firefighters and others to get sandbags put up or dig trenches or who knows what else. They better start preparing now, because all that topsoil and all that ash and char and ruin is going to come sliding down the mountains and slamming against everything at the bottom.
We reap what we sow. We gotta respect the nature near us, and if we don't, we'll feel it buffet us with wreckage and destruction.