Inside the Dangerous and Unpredictable Behavior of Wildfire by Douglas Fox April 3, 2017 | $5 | Vol

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Inside the dangerous and unpredictable behavior of wildfire By Douglas Fox April 3, 2017 | $5 | Vol. 49 No. 6 | www.hcn.org 49 No. | $5 Vol. April 3, 2017 CONTENTS

Editor’s note You can’t take politics out of the West Since last year’s presidential campaign and election, I’ve received a number of letters from readers angered by what they call the “political” content in the magazine. Stick to the West’s core issues, they say, topics like timber and grazing, and leave our nation’s divisive politics out. Unfortunately, that just isn’t possible. The American West has had a complicated relationship with politics and the federal government from the get-go, and under the current administration, that relationship is feeling a new strain. President Donald Trump seems to have little regard for the kinds of federally funded programs that make life in this region better. The latest White House budget seeks significant cuts to the departments of Education and Energy, and absurdly deep cuts to the departments of Interior, Commerce and Agriculture. Taken together, the cuts represent A plane spraying fire retardant passes near the plume of the 2014 King Fire in California a huge chunk of funding for federal agencies while a lidar machine on a truck scans the smoke. Braniff Davis/SJSU Fire Lab that play essential, interlocking roles in keeping the American West economically and ecologically (Utilities) have to work with FEATURE healthy. Some agencies, such as the National us to provide access to solar. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, do the “ basic research concerning our land, air and water On the cover 12 It doesn’t matter if it’s a red Firestorm that we need to fill in the considerable gaps in our A column of smoke Inside the dangerous and unpredictable behavior of wildfire understanding of the place we live. state or a blue state, there’s rises from the Pioneer By Douglas Fox Fire in Idaho. Inside This issue’s cover story, by award-winning enormous customer demand. the opaque plume, contributor Douglas Fox, provides a timely example, —Alex McDonough, vice president for policy air moves at gale CURRENTS as early-season wildfires are already sweeping parts at Sunrun, a solar panel leasing company, after forces, which can of the West. Fox takes us into the towering plumes Nevada and then Arizona backed off anti-solar redirect wildfire into 5 Can aging dams withstand super-floods? of smoke to follow the work of researchers — often policies that penalized consumers who installed unexpected places. Elizabeth Shogren Boise National Forest Scientists warn that enormous deluges may be more likely than we thought helped by federal funding — as they advance the solar energy. 6 science of wildfires. His story reminds us of the More: hcne.ws/ Anxious in Greeley A conservative community that’s home to refugees, solars-power undocumented workers and international students grapples with destructive nature of both fire and humanity: The the new political reality early fire research done by the U.S. military was designed to help the Allies more efficiently firebomb 7 The Latest: Harassment at Hanford? German cities in World War II. New research is 8 Sportsmen step up for public lands A hook-and-bullet groundswell uncovering how intense wildfires create their own confronts legislative threats weather and move across the land — knowledge 8 that could save lives. If Trump’s budget cuts hobble The Latest: Gray wolves lose endangered status in Wyoming that research, it will harm, not strengthen, the West’s security. DEPARTMENTS National politics play out in other stories, too. Correspondent Krista Langlois describes the 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG problem of aging dams, like California’s Oroville, as researchers warn of potential super-floods. And 4 LETTERS correspondent Josh Zaffos describes the anxieties 9 THE HCN COMMUNITY Sustainer’s Club of refugees and undocumented workers in northern Complete access Colorado — people who are as much a part of our to subscriber-only 20 Dear Friends content region as our loggers and ranchers. The West is as 21 MARKETPLACE bound to national politics as anywhere else. There HCN’s website is no way to separate the defunding of science from hcn.org 25 WRITERS ON THE RANGE the xenophobic policies of our current president, Digital edition The battle over Montana’s vacant House seat By Ben Long nor those policies from the ecological destruction hcne.ws/digi-4906 26 BOOKS we continue to inflict on the region. For readers The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen Reviewed by Sarah Gilman who wish it were otherwise, I apologize. But if you Follow us 27 ESSAY see these issues as part of a larger story, the story of the West, and thereby of the United States, then By Rafael Reyna  Love across the landscape read on. @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Betsy Marston —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief

2 High Country News April 3, 2017 From our website: HCN.ORG

Zinke’s balancing act Trending The new secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, Big Rec’s has his work cut out for him. So far, his priorities for Interior have been vague but big move unsurprising: rebuilding trust between the In Utah, despite public and the department, increasing widespread use public-lands access for sportsmen, and of public land for improving outdated infrastructure at recreation, top elected national parks. Zinke has been mum officials want to on how he will combat climate change whittle down federal as the head manager of a fifth of the land protections. As a result, the Outdoor nation’s landmass, in contrast to his Retailer trade show, two predecessors, who created climate which brings in research centers and pushed renewable $45 million to the energy. The secretary has also said he local economy, is will conduct a “bold” restructuring of the leaving the state. agency, though details on that are still In an opinion piece, slim. Perhaps the biggest questions are Gretchen Bleiler how he will balance a mining- and drilling- agrees that Utah friendly agenda with habitat conservation doesn’t deserve the and access to public lands, as well as how show. But now that he will achieve his priorities if President Big Rec is on the Donald Trump follows through with move, where should it go? Colorado isn’t Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke arrived for his first day of work at the Interior Department in proposals for major budget cuts. Tay Wiles a shoo-in, Bleiler says: Washington, D.C., riding Tonto, a 17-year-old Irish sport horse, and then proceeded to sign two The state’s leaders Interior Department More: hcne.ws/zinkes-priorities orders that showed his support for the sportsmen community. could take a leading role to abate climate change — and if they don’t, the show should (Utilities) have to work with go somewhere that us to provide access to solar. does. “ Gretchen Bleiler, It doesn’t matter if it’s a red Opinion state or a blue state, there’s You say enormous customer demand. Pat Wayne: —Alex McDonough, vice president for policy “Not sure I agree at Sunrun, a solar panel leasing company, after” with the author. She Nevada and then Arizona backed off anti-solar makes the same tired policies that penalized consumers who installed mistakes by making solar energy. Elizabeth Shogren Darryl Thorn, Jason Patrick, Jake Ryan and Duane Ehmer, pictured from left, were found big pronouncements More: hcne.ws/ guilty of charges associated with the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife like ‘The old extractive order is behind us.’ solars-power Refuge. The four were minor players in the occupation, whose ringleaders, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were acquitted of charges last October. Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office While that may be true in places like California … it Malheur trials are over— but the movement rages on certainly isn’t true in In late October, Ryan and Ammon Bundy, does a jury find Ammon Bundy, who was touted the USA as a whole.” the Malheur occupation’s key players, were as the leader of the occupation, not guilty of Christian Cutshaw: acquitted of all charges. The verdict surprised conspiracy, but convict those who played a “If we’re going even the defense. But in mid-March, a new lesser role? The recent verdicts may have further strictly off of jury looked less favorably on the remaining motivated the takeover’s sympathizers. To environmental and defendants, delivering a mix of guilty and them, the guilty verdicts made martyrs of the conservation efforts, non-guilty verdicts on conspiracy and gun occupiers. Leah Sottile the show should go charges. The decision perplexed many: How More: hcne.ws/malheur-movement Sunrun Solar to Washington or California.” Denece Vincent: “Moving the show Finding sanctuary out of Utah seemed Jeanette Vizguerra, an reasonable. Trying to 250,000 undocumented Mexican mother enact purity standards Estimated number of migrating ducks that the of three U.S.-born children, holds before ‘awarding’ the Great Salt Lake can no longer support due to her fist up as she addresses show seems a bit too an invasion of European phragmites. The reed, supporters gathered outside ivory-tower-ish.” the First Unitarian Church in a perennial grass, has covered 25,000 acres More: hcne.ws/bye- since the early 1990s, reducing habitat for Denver in February. She skipped a scheduled meeting with U.S. utah and Facebook. phalaropes, snowy plovers and other birds, and com/highcountrynews annually sucking up a lot of water, estimated Immigration and Customs (in acre-feet) at Enforcement officials for fear of detention and deportation, and 71,000. has been staying in the church’s Emily Benson basement since. Sarah Tory More: hcne.ws/phragmite-insight Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images More: hcne.ws/sanctuary-start

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Letters Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. . High Country News The story of Hig and Big Guy d Pett Executive director/Publisher l Regarding Anna V. Smith’s recent Paul Larmer Joe f s reserve Editor-in-Chief story about Oregon’s Valley of the Gi- t Brian Calvert ants (“Growing pains,” HCN, 3/6/17), gh ri SENIOR EDITOR ission o long, long ago my boss, Guy Higginson, m All . Jodi Peterson er

supervised a group of BLM foresters. I p up Art director e was one of them. The Bureau of Land h Cindy Wehling t Management back in the 1970s was a h Deputy editor, digital it w timber-producing machine, and we O&C

Kate Schimel d

Associate EDITORs foresters pulled the levers. In those se Tay Wiles, u Maya L. Kapoor days, our axes could point at a patch artoonist Gro e C

Assistant EDITOR h of timber and off it went to the mill. t

Paige Blankenbuehler d

But not the 51 acres in the Valley of Cartoon l D.C. Correspondent an Elizabeth Shogren the Giants. Guy (known as “Hig”) was

WRITERS ON THE RANGE friends with a barber in Salem, Oregon, itoria editor Betsy Marston an aficionado of big trees. The barber Ed Associate designer discovered that the largest Doug fir in Pett Brooke Warren l

Oregon stood tall in this valley, and he Joe Copy editOR and Hig initiated a two-man effort to Diane Sylvain Contributing editorS keep timber beasts out. The tree, “Big Cally Carswell, Sarah Guy,” was written up in the paper. It Gilman, Ruxandra Guidi, was listed in books about giant trees. It Michelle Nijhuis, Jonathan Thompson was famous. Hig, leader of the forest- CorrespondentS ers, stretched out his arms and told us Krista Langlois, Sarah beasts to stay back, so we did. A few According to the North American Why coal has declined Tory, Joshua Zaffos years passed and we promoted the place Falconers Association, “Falconry can be Editorial Fellow In “Overdosed” in the Feb. 20 issue, a bit; it’s not easy to find. Then three defined as the taking of wild quarry in Anna V. Smith the author writes, “Federal regulations of us hacked a trail right up to Big Guy its natural state and habitat by means Interns Emily Benson, and the low cost of natural gas have and posted a sign by the road — “Trail of a trained raptor.” I suppose one could Rebecca Worby combined to create the worst economic Development Director to Big Guy.” A few people visited. It’s of define “pet” in such a way to include a climate for coal in decades.” While this Laurie Milford minor ecological value; an island in a falconry bird, but I think, on the whole, sentence is true, it is also misleading. Philanthropy Advisor landscape of private second- and third- that few dog, cat, parrot or horse owners Alyssa Pinkerton The real economic issue for Craig is not growth timber. spend much time pursuing wild quarry Development Assistant just the decline in coal demand, but More years passed, and the BLM in its natural state with said beasts. Christine List massive changes in the industry that turned a little “green” — even O&C Furthermore, these animal caretakers Marketing & Promotions have resulted in hardship for the miners Manager JoAnn Kalenak foresters did. Somewhere along the line, even more rarely capture their animals of Craig and the rest of the community WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel Valley of the Giants was designated an from the wild, train them, hunt with that relied on those paychecks. Far Database/IT administrator “outstanding natural area.” It didn’t them for a while, and then release them ahead of regulations are the shifts in Alan Wells need Hig to watch over it anymore. An- back to the wild, as falconers commonly practices that allow Wyoming miners to DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT cient Big Guy toppled in a 1981 winter do. Falconers really don’t like their birds Gretchen King produce five times the coal per year of a storm. My boss and friend fell, too, some being called “pets.” FINANCE MANAGER Colorado miner. 24 years later. Those of us who care I personally would have preferred Beckie Avera Likewise, mountaintop removal Accounts Receivable know that protection of special places the author to quote a U.S. falconer provides a huge productivity margin Jan Hoffman in the West is often initiated by one or regarding ferruginous hawks, rather over other methods. And of course, we Circulation Systems admin. two people who take action, be it from than a U.K.-based one. All U.K. non- can’t overlook the shift away from union Kathy Martinez within the agency or without. Thanks native raptors are bred in captivity and Circulation operations, which also depresses wages. for the memories. imprinted; imprinting is a bad choice Kati Johnson, Pam Peters, Even in the narrowest interpretation of Doris Teel for most buteos, but especially so for Pete Schay the statement, low-cost natural gas has GrantWriter Janet Reasoner something as stubborn and powerful Bureau of Land Management, retired had far more impact than any federal as a ferrug, as your author found out. [email protected] Camp Sherman, Oregon regulations. This will become quite ap- [email protected] Here in the U.S., ferruginous hawks are parent when the Trump administration [email protected] usually taken as non-imprinted older [email protected] rolls back regulations (at the expense chicks or captured as immature “pas- [email protected] Falconry birds aren’t pets of the environment) and coal jobs still sage” birds and have far fewer of the don’t come back, because natural gas FOUNDER As a 55-year-old lifelong raptor enthusi- behavioral problems associated with Tom Bell will remain a preferable fuel. ast with 12 years of professional raptor imprinted birds. They’re a handful more Board of Directors It is this sort of misleading attack on John Belkin, Colo. work under my belt, I enjoyed seeing a because of their flight style, in which regulation that allows Trump and his Chad Brown, Ore. ferruginous hawk on the cover (“Now they often refuse close-flushed quarry Beth Conover, Colo. ilk to attract the support of the eco- you see her,” HCN, 3/6/17). As a li- and prefer to pursue jackrabbits going Jay Dean, Calif. nomically displaced with lies and false Bob Fulkerson, Nev. censed falconer of over 30 years, though, over the horizon, and because of their promises of a return to the past. Wayne Hare, Colo. I take exception to the author’s state- stubborn attitude. Even so, there are a Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. ment that “ferruginous hawks, however, few outstanding ferruginous falconers David Strip Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico are not popular pets among falconers.” here in the U.S. Llaves, New Mexico Samaria Jaffe, Calif. That’s because falconers don’t keep rap- Bryan Kimsey Nicole Lampe, Ore. tors as “pets.” Marla Painter, N.M. Clayton, New Mexico Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. Dan Stonington, Wash. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. recycled paper. Luis Torres, N.M. issues that define the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News April 3, 2017 Joel Pett Editorial Cartoon used with the permission of Joel Pett and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved. the short-term record underestimates the the short-termrecordunderestimates the dating theresults,Bakerhas concluded deposits andotherevidencecarbon- the ColoradoandGreenforsediment very long,”Bakerexplains. things isbestevaluatedifyourrecord per-floods occur.“Theprobabilityofrare us amuchclearerpictureofhowoftensu- sands ofyearsnaturalhistory,giving ogy allowsscientiststoreconstructthou- “completely inadequate.”Today,technol- to thelate1800s,atimespanBakercalls cords andstreamgauges. such probabilitiescamefromhistoricalre- At thetime,bestsciencetodetermine floods thatscientistsdeemedprobable. they weredesignedtohandlethelargest dams werebuiltinthemid-20thcentury, came nationalnews.WhenmanyWestern quences ofunderestimatingfloodriskbe- buckled undermassiverainfall,theconse- tential floodpaths. public utilitieswithinfrastructureinpo- is largelybeingignoredbyagenciesand And like Minoura, he feels his research recorded history happenfairly routinely. found thatfloodsmuchlargerthananyin the ColoradoPlateau.LikeMinoura,he’s to Minoura’sstudythefloodhistoryof Baker hasbeenusingtechniquessimilar sity ofArizonapaleo-hydrologistVictor wave thatdevastatedtheregionin2011. infrastructure unpreparedforthe50-foot ichi nuclear power plant and other coastal to respond,leavingtheFukushimaDai- another tsunami.Butofficialswereslow that therewasasignificantpossibilityof the past3,000years. waves hadwrackedtheSendaicoastover but threemassive,earthquake-triggered rice paddies,anddiscoveredthatnotone team beganlookingforevidencebeneath sand people.Intrigued,Minouraandhis it swept away a castle and killed a thou- poem thatdescribedatsunamisolarge I I  andfrequentlyColorado, covers Langlois livesCorrespondent inDurango, Krista @cestmoiLanglois tion’s tallest dam in Oroville, California, tion’s tallestdaminOroville,California, n February,whenaspillwayatthena- Koji Minourastumbledonamedieval n thelate1980s,Japanesepaleontologist By combing Southwestern rivers like By combing Southwestern rivers like But thatrecordstretchesbackonly For thepastseveraldecades,Univer- In a2001paper,Minouraconcluded withstand super-floods? Scientists warn that enormous deluges may be more likely than we thought Can agingCan dams A lask a. B y K ri s ta

L angl as bigone17thcenturyflood. the state’seconomy—anditwasonlyhalf killed thousandsofpeopleandcrippled more frequently.Thelastone,in1862, pen atleastevery200years,andmaybe state anddiscoveredthatsuchfloodshap- ied therecordacrossabroadswathof paleoclimatologist B.LynnIngramstud- gist MichaelDettingerandUCBerkeley thought. U.S. GeologicalSurveyhydrolo- may bemorecommonthanpreviously more canbestoredinitsreservoir.) way tohandleflowsup220,000cfs,and Reclamation hassincebolsteredthespill- peaked atjust125,000cfs.(TheBureauof na’s GlenCanyonDam,justdownstream, and 1984thatnearlyoverwhelmedArizo- parison, thelegendaryfloodingof1983 previous estimateof96,000cfs.Incom- at 171,000cfs,alsomuchgreaterthanthe Baker’s calculationsputthe100-yearflood predicted fromthestreamgaugerecord. second, morethandoublethe112,000cfs year floodatroughly246,000cubicfeetper and histeamestimatedtheaverage500- Upper ColoradonearMoab,Utah,Baker size andfrequencyoflargefloods.Onthe In 2013, Dettinger and Ingram wrote In 2013,DettingerandIngramwrote In California,too,super-floods oi s to thisscience.” States, if we don’t seriously pay attention similar thingsoccurringintheUnited ment,” Bakeradds.“Wemayhavesome tsunami and didn’t act is “an embarrass- That Japanese officials were warned of a failure ofsometheWest’sbiggestdams. hardy tonotatleastplanforthepossible realistic indicatorsofcurrentrisks. that ancientfloodrecordsarenolonger Engineers believewe’vesoalteredrivers Officials withtheU.S.ArmyCorpsof dams, otheragenciesaremorereluctant: used paleofloodresearchtoretrofitsome cies like the Bureau of Reclamationhave Dam SafetyOfficials.Andwhileagen- according to the Association of State pair, failure couldbedeadlyareinneedofre- the country,some2,000damswhose waters couldhaveoverwhelmedit. been depleted by years of drought,flood- ied, andyetifOroville’sreservoirhadn’t storms DettingerandIngramhavestud- tion wasnowherenearasheavythe dodged abullet:Thiswinter’sprecipita- spillway. Butinmanyways,Californians residents atriskofinundation. the spillway,putting180,000downstream sediment-choked watererodedaholein in thestructure’s49-yearhistory.The emergency spillwayforthefirsttime excess waterovertheOrovilleDam’s that watermanagerswereforcedtospill cipitation poundedCaliforniathiswinter prediction provedprescient:Somuchpre- due foranotherhugewateryear.Their in that California was Scientific AmericanthatCaliforniawas But Bakerbelievesitwouldbefool- Oroville isfarfromunique—across Luckily, emergencycrewspatchedthe CURR www.hcn.org S He Bay Area. for the FranciscoSan warnings flood flash forecasters issue on Feb. 20,as California, Oroville, the main spillway in project infront of Dam Oroville to workers on the Fire, talks right, A member of Cal a c c H ra tor igh m E ent Am

C e o Beevia ountry zcu NT a/ Th

A e N P ews ews S 5 Arafa Mhuammad- Yunus of Myanmar holds the hand of her daughter, Nurasmah, 7, during a march in Greeley in support of refugees and immigrants. Alyson McClaran/Greeley Tribune Anxious in Greeley A conservative community that’s home to refugees, undocumented workers and international students grapples with the new political reality

BAy JoshU Zaffos

n a sunny morning in early March, deportations, arrests and general hostil- fill most of the meatpacking jobs. Several O over 400 people hit the sidewalks ity. Though Trump’s latest “travel ban,” hundred Somalis now live here, along with of Greeley, a small city on Colorado’s which would have suspended immigration refugees from Myanmar and Ethiopia. On Eastern Plains. A diverse crowd in sweat- from six predominantly Muslim countries, campus, there are 395 international stu- shirts, blue jeans, robes, ankle-length has been blocked, U.S. Immigration and dents from 47 countries. skirts and headscarves, they marched to Customs Enforcement (ICE) is stepping “Our economy depends on undocu- show their support for the city’s sizable up detainments, arresting hundreds of mented and Latino people,” and the uni- refugee and immigrant population. They immigrants nationwide. In Greeley, this versity is made stronger by its diverse stu- started at the University of Northern new political reality has presented local dent population, says Matt Birnbaum, one Colorado, wound toward downtown and leaders with sometimes uncomfortable of several Northern Colorado professors ended up at the Global Refugee Center, a choices: What can — and should — the leading efforts to protect international local nonprofit. community do to make its new residents and immigrant students and community The route was no coincidence: Greeley feel safe? members. “If we’re not going to protect is an island of cultural and intellectual Greeley was founded in the 19th cen- them, that’s troubling. ” diversity in a conservative, rural county. tury as a utopian colony, whose white set- Refugees and undocumented workers tlers emphasized communal living and hree days after the election, Northern help keep the agricultural economy afloat, egalitarian values. Today, surrounding T Colorado president Kay Norton sent a and the university’s international student Weld County is fiercely conservative; last two-minute video to students and faculty population has grown in recent years. By November, Trump won here by 22 points. condemning verbal attacks over “identity” most accounts, these new residents have Weld County is one of the country’s top and “affiliation” that, according to student settled in with relative ease. agricultural producers, and Greeley’s reports, spiked following a Trump cam- But as the targets of President Don- largest non-government employers are paign rally on campus on Halloween. She ald Trump’s nationalist rhetoric and new the university, a wind-turbine manufac- described the school as “a family” where security measures, many have spent the turer, the hospital system, and JBS USA, everyone is “welcome and necessary.” last few months anxious about possible which runs a large beef-processing plant But students criticized Norton’s mes- on the city’s north end. Migrant and un- sage as tepid and insincere, with some Correspondent Joshua Zaffos writes from Fort documented workers, along with refugees calling her dismissive of harassment. Collins, Colorado.  @jzaffos fleeing war and environmental disasters, Fifty students protested near her office,

6 High Country News April 3, 2017 chanting “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Kay Norton has the university doesn’t plan to declare it- at the Global Refugee Center, which got to go!” Then they went to the school self a sanctuary campus.” Doing so, Gon- helps them learn English, find work and board of trustees to demand her termina- zales points out, would not give the school settle into their new community. “But tion, along with increased funding for stu- legal cover for resisting a federal warrant after the election, there’s also a lot of dent centers that serve minorities. to detain an undocumented student. And fear that their immigration status can Faculty members got involved, too, de- some administrators warn that sanctuary change or they can be deported.” Born in livering a “sanctuary petition” in Novem- declarations could provoke Trump to with- Ethiopia, Tuha came to Colorado in 2011 ber. It urged Norton to refuse to share stu- hold federal funding, as he has threatened to live with her mother. She got a green Workers enter a dents’ personal information with federal to do with cities that refuse to aid federal card and is now attending community project area during the authorities, to resist immigration detain- immigration enforcement. college. Since the election, she says, the Hanford cleanup. ments on campus, and to publicly back But the possibility of losing interna- center’s citizenship classes have been ful- Department of Energy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals tional students also has schools on edge. ly booked with refugees rushing to com- (DACA), an Obama administration pro- More than 1 million international students plete the process. gram that enables undocumented youth enrolled at U.S. universities in the last Immigrant-rights activists, mean- THE LATEST who grew up in the U.S. to work or attend academic year, doubling numbers from 15 while, are trying to calm nerves, says Syl- college without fear of deportation. years ago. The growth reflects a concerted via Martinez, spokeswoman for Latinos Backstory Anthropology professor Whitney Dun- effort by state universities and colleges to Unidos, a local advocacy group. This Feb- At the Hanford Site can, who helped organize the petition ef- court international students who pay high- ruary, false rumors of ICE highway check- in eastern Washing- fort, says many faculty felt an “urgent er tuition rates, usually without financial points and raids in Greeley led some peo- ton, corporations need” to show support for DACA and aid, which helps offset shrinking public ed- ple to skip work and keep their children hired by the govern- immigrant students, considering Gree- ucation budgets. Yet a recent survey found home from school. Martinez, the daugh- ment have been ley’s history. Just over a decade ago, ICE that nearly 40 percent of 250 schools are ter of migrant farmworkers who grew up working since 1989 to clean up the haz- agents stormed a local meatpacking plant reporting declines in international applica- working alongside undocumented labor- ardous and compli- and arrested 273 undocumented workers. tions this year, which some are referring to ers, says it’s crucial to dispel inaccurate re- cated legacy of more Many locals still remember the raid and as the “Trump Effect.” ports so immigrants don’t feel intimidated than four decades of its aftershocks, as parents were detained or quit working and lose their incomes. At plutonium produc- and, in many cases, deported, leaving be- the same time, she acknowledges cause for tion. Over the years, hind spouses and children. “America is a big symbol concern: “A raid can happen.” the project has run In response, the university’s board of Martinez is speaking with local church- into problems ranging trustees passed a resolution in support of of equality. There are moments es about serving as safe havens for undocu- from leaking tanks DACA, and Norton joined a group of over mented families. Since February, Jeanette and groundwater con- when I have worries tamination to whistle- 600 university presidents who signed a Vizguerra, an undocumented Mexican with that is a myth.” blower complaints pro-DACA statement. But Northern Colo- three U.S.-born children, has been living in of mismanagement rado stopped short of declaring itself a —” Nahid,” Iranian graduate student a Denver Unitarian church after skipping at the University of Northern Colorado and suppression of “sanctuary” school. In a January campus- a meeting with ICE. So far, federal agents dissent (“The Hanford wide email, Norton argued that the term have been reluctant to arrest immigrants Whistleblowers,” HCN, lacked a meaningful definition. taking shelter in churches. 2/10/14). University leaders seem “generally Nahid, an Iranian graduate student, Trump has said he will not revoke supportive and sympathetic,” Duncan came to Greeley with her husband and DACA, and claims that ICE is only target- Followup says. They’ve started offering trainings for young son in late 2015 after waiting a ing dangerous criminals. The latest version Though work recently staff on how to handle law enforcement year for a visa. (Nahid asked HCN to of the executive order suspending entry of resumed on disman- requests for student information without withhold her real name to avoid being tar- immigrants and refugees from six coun- tling one of Hanford’s a warrant. But so far, the administration geted.) Her field of study doesn’t exist in tries does not affect current visa holders plutonium plants after a radiation alarm in hasn’t committed to take specific steps to Iran, and she wanted her son to receive and, on paper, allows for travel waivers. January caused delays, support students, such as providing legal a secular education. But Trump’s rise has But the president has often changed the cleanup project counsel or establishing spaces where im- chilled her American experience. Even his positions, and his aggressive moves to now faces a new chal- migrant students can take refuge during though his travel ban shouldn’t directly deport immigrants and ban Muslims have lenge. Washington raids. affect her since she has a visa, she feels unsettled communities with changing de- Sens. Patty Murray The president of Washington State the order labels her and all other Iranians mographics. At a Feb. 28 city council meet- and Maria Cantwell, University in Pullman — another diverse as “radical” Muslims. ing, Rochelle Galindo, Greeley’s only La- both Democrats, campus surrounded by a rural population “America is a big symbol of equality,” tina representative, proposed a resolution wrote to the Depart- which is 89 percent white — also signed the she says. “There are moments when I have stating that Greeley “stands in solidarity” ment of Energy’s DACA statement following a sanctuary pe- worries that is a myth.” with its residents regardless of immigra- Office of Inspector General to request tition and student walkout in December. A Nahid, a practicing Muslim, hasn’t felt tion status. Mayor Tom Norton responded an investigation of follow-up list of grievances from an undocu- personally threatened; professors and ad- belligerently, railing against sanctuary workers’ compensa- mented students’ alliance repeats a call for ministrators have made her feel welcome. cities. Another councilman told Galindo, tion at Hanford, sanctuary campus status and urges Wash- But she confesses to crying when she thinks “You’re in the wrong community, I think.” citing worker allega- ington State to hire a full-time employee to about never seeing her family in Iran; she Both men later apologized. tions of intimidation work with undocumented students, expand worries about being denied re-entry if she A few days later, Galindo shared the and harassment af- diversity training for staff and faculty, in- leaves the U.S. She still hopes to work and story with the crowd gathered on campus ter they filed claims. crease employment and housing opportuni- raise her son in the U.S., but admits that for the march. “If someone can say that to The senators also ties, and explicitly support a path to citizen- if she were deciding on graduate school to- someone born and raised here,” she said, voiced concern that the Trump administra- ship for undocumented youth. day, she would look at universities in other “imagine what they say to immigrants.” A tion’s recent stay of a Washington State is “doing everything countries. “We feel so uncertain and fearful moment later, Martinez took the mic, de- regulation to protect it can, legally, in order to protect immi- about our tomorrow,” she says. livering a message she keeps repeating to whistleblowers might grant students,” says Mary Jo Gonzales, local business owners, officials, professors, discourage workers the school’s vice president for student ncertainties are simmering off students, citizens and undocumented peo- from coming forward. affairs. That includes “know your rights” U campus, too. ple — all of whom make the community Rebecca Worby workshops for students and support for Refugees generally feel welcome in what it is and will be: “We cannot sit on the undocumented student group. “But Greeley, says Entisar Tuha, who works the sidelines.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 THE LATEST Conservation groups including hunters, anglers, hikers and horsemen gather at the Backstory Montana state Capitol in Helena in January In 1995, the U.S. to protest the idea of the federal government Fish and Wildlife transferring public lands to the states. Service reintroduced William Campbell/Corbis via Getty Images endangered gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park and cen- tral Idaho, and they tangible. “It starts to hit home,” says Kin- soon spread through- dle, “when you think about those acres out the Northern Rockies. After a series you won’t be able to hunt in anymore.” of lawsuits, in 2011 Members of Backcountry Hunters & Congress delisted Anglers have organized local events across wolves in Montana, the West to get the word out, including Idaho and parts of “Public Lands Pint Nights.” “They’re on Washington, Oregon the ground,” Tawney says. “We just ampli- and Utah. (“How the fy their voices.” And the group has a lot of gray wolf lost its en- voices to amplify: Membership has tripled dangered status — and over the last year. Other groups have also how enviros helped,” seen unprecedented engagement: Kindle HCN, 6/6/11). In Wyoming, wolves has been struck by the number of Nation- remained listed al Wildlife Federation members asking, until 2012, when “How can I write a letter? What hearing they came under can I show up to?” state management. Under the Trump administration, Conservation groups sportsmen could wield significant influ- sued, and federal Sportsmen step up ence — and not just because many of them protection was re- vote Republican. It helps to have legisla- stored in 2014. for public lands tors and leaders who can identify with Followup sportsmen’s connection with public lands, notes Kindle: rising before dawn and hik- In a March 3 ruling, A hook-and-bullet groundswell confronts legislative threats ing miles in the dark, being “purely quiet” the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals By Rebecca Worby while watching for wildlife. Trump’s son reversed that decision. Donald Jr. is a “Life Member” of Back- Wyoming’s wolves country Hunters & Anglers, and Interior will again be placed n Feb. 2, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, tration. Generally, they tend to be more Secretary Ryan Zinke also hunts. And under state manage- O announced his intention to withdraw conservative than other outdoor groups, Chaffetz is among the nearly 300 mem- ment, and Wyoming a bill proposing the transfer of 3.3 million supporting gun rights and small govern- bers of the House and Senate who make will implement its acres of federal lands to 10 Western states. ment. “We do have a little more credibility up the long-standing bipartisan Congres- 2012 plan, which al- “Groups I support and care about fear it in some conservative circles,” says Steve sional Sportsmen’s Caucus. lows wolves to be shot sends the wrong message,” he explained, Kandell, sportsmen’s conservation project George W. Bush’s administration heed- on sight across most of the state. “This alongside a photo of himself in camo, a dog director for Trout Unlimited. ed sportsmen when they spoke out against decision highlights in his arms. Only a week had passed since threats to environmental protection: In that Congress should he introduced the legislation, but sports- he Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 2004, hunters and anglers met with Bush not step in to block ju- men’s groups had taken to social media T occupation in January 2016 “woke peo- and encouraged the administration to dicial review under the swiftly and aggressively, impelling their ple up,” says Land Tawney, president and abandon Clean Water Act revisions that Endangered Species members to speak out publicly against it. CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. would have threatened wetlands and Act,” wrote Earthjus- Chaffetz’s H.R. 621 is one of several Although the Sagebrush Rebellion be- streams valuable to fish and wildlife. tice attorney Timothy recent proposals that have struck a nerve gan decades ago, the “return the land” Hook-and-bullet groups may also Preso in a statement. with sportsmen. Many fear they’ll lose ac- rhetoric of the Bundy family and their serve as a bridge between traditionally Plaintiffs say they may cess to the federal lands where they hunt supporters made more sportsmen realize left-leaning environmental groups and ask for a rehearing. Anna V. Smith and fish if those lands are transferred to how deeply a small — but increasingly the current administration when it comes states, which are likely to sell or develop vocal — contingent of Westerners resents to public lands. Threats to public lands them. The hook-and-bullet contingent has federal management of public lands. are “creating one of the biggest unlikely

. long played a significant role in conserva- And “the drumbeat has really ramped alliances in the world,” says David Allen, t p tion — especially economically, via taxes up since the election on these issues,” president and CEO of the Rocky Mountain De h on firearms and ammunition as well as says Whit Fosburgh, Theodore Roosevelt Elk Foundation. As Tawney points out, Fis d through hunting and fishing licenses. But Conservation Partnership president and sportsmen tend to take a middle-ground now, more are putting their mouths where CEO. approach, while the environmental com- e an m a their money is: speaking out online, sign- When Chaffetz introduced H.R. 621, munity creates a more ambitious “goal- G g ing petitions, attending rallies and town sportsmen were “ready at the flick of a post” to work toward. This allows groups in m halls. switch to engage,” says Aaron Kindle, to make more centrist deals. Galvanized by escalating threats and Western sportsmen manager for the Na- Now, sportsmen’s organizations in- e/Wyo the national sweep of activism since the tional Wildlife Federation. His group has tend to continue harnessing their mem- ck election, sportsmen are poised to play a been preparing for public-lands battles bers’ energy and passion on behalf of pub- Go k key role in public-lands legislation un- for several years, educating and engaging lic lands. Their message to politicians is

Mar der President Donald Trump’s adminis- members as they fought “bad bills” at the clear: “If you think you’re gonna come and A gray wolf in state level. It was particularly easy to mo- tromp on the bedrock issue for all these Wyoming’s upper Gros Rebecca Worby is an editorial intern at bilize people against H.R. 621 because the people,” says Kindle, “you’re gonna have a Ventre drainage. High Country News.  @beccaworby bill made the potential loss of public lands hell of a fight on your hands.” 8 High Country News April 3, 2017 THE HCN COMMUNITY

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Photo: Jazz Marie Photography www.hcn.org High Country News 11 Inside the dangerous and unpredictable behavior of wildfire

FEATURE By Douglas Fox

12 High Country News April 3, 2017 ircraft N2UW has flown through all kinds of Canyon in just a few hours. Its 100-foot flames leaned weather. The twin-propeller plane is sleek, hungrily into the slope as they surged uphill in erratic A petite, and so packed with scientific gear for bursts and ignited entire stands of trees at once. studying the atmosphere that there’s barely room But to David Kingsmill, in the plane’s front pas- for two passengers to squeeze into its back seats. senger seat, the flames on the ground two miles Monitors show radar reflections, gas concentra- below were almost invisible — dwarfed by the dark tions and the sizes of cloud droplets. The plane has thing that towered above. The fire’s plume of gray flown through tropical rainstorms in the Caribbean, smoke billowed 35,000 feet into the sky, punching through the gusting fronts of thunderheads over into the stratosphere with such force that a downy the Great Plains, and through turbulent down-slope white pileus cloud coalesced on its underside like a Smoke rises from winds that spawn dust storms in the lee of the Si- bruise. The plume rotated slowly, seeming to pulse the Pioneer Fire, burning in the erra Nevadas. But the four people on board Aug. 29, of its own volition, like a chthonic spirit rising over Boise National 2016, will never forget their flight over Idaho. the ashes of the forest that no longer imprisoned it. Forest in Idaho in 2016. Scientists are The plane took off from Boise at 4 p.m. that day, “It looked,” says Kingsmill, “like a nuclear bomb.” discovering new ways to see inside veering toward the Salmon River Mountains, 40 miles Undaunted, Kingsmill and the pilot decided to the smoke to better northeast. There, the Pioneer Fire had devoured do what no research aircraft had done: Fly directly predict fire behavior. Kari Greer 29,000 acres and rolled 10 miles up Clear Creek through the plume.

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 An N2UW research plane flies over the Pioneer Fire smoke plume. Nick Guy/University of Wyoming

Orange haze closed around them, then darkened to black, Laboratory. Their behavior “is particularly threatening be- blotting out the world. Kingsmill felt his seat press hard against cause we don’t have a good way to anticipate or predict (it).” So his back as the plane lifted suddenly, like a leaf in the wind. Finney, Clements and a handful of others are increasingly turn- Then the black turned back to orange. The plane jolted and fell. ing their gaze to fire’s invisible and diaphanous incarnations: Pens, cameras and notebooks leaped into the air and clattered the hot, roiling gases and smoke swirling among the flames, and against windows. A technician slammed headlong into the ceil- the rising plumes they coalesce to form. ing. A moment later, N2UW glided back into daylight. There, they believe, lies the key to understanding the way a According to the plane’s instruments, it had been seized wildfire breathes — roaring into conflagration with bigger gulps “We’ve never by an 80 mph updraft of hot, buoyant air, followed by a turbu- of oxygen or sputtering along more slowly on little sips. How it lent downdraft. It was “the strongest updraft I’ve ever flown moves, spawning lethal fireballs or hurling burning logs ahead seen this kind through,” says Kingsmill, a precipitation and radar scientist of the flames. The way it grapples with the upper layers of the at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Even stronger forces atmosphere, sending embers in unexpected directions to propa- of structure in were at work several thousand feet below: The plane’s radar gate itself across the land. Even, perhaps, the role its elemental a fire plume, waves, reflecting off rising smoke particles, had registered up- opposite — water —plays in driving its explosive growth. drafts exceeding 100 mph. Nailing those connections could provide new tools for moni- ever.” Hundreds of miles away, Kingsmill’s research partner, Craig toring fires and predicting their behavior. This could give fire- Clements, a fire meteorologist at San Jose State University, fighters precious minutes of advance warning before potential —Fire meteorologist Craig watched the plane’s flight path creep across a map on his laptop catastrophes, and better inform the difficult decision to order an Clements commenting screen. The unfolding drama offered a tantalizingly detailed evacuation. on data collected from the Pioneer Fire glimpse into the anatomy of an extreme wildfire. “It’s amazing,” But it won’t be easy. “The plume is orders of magnitude says Clements. “We’ve never seen this kind of structure in a fire harder to study than the stuff on the ground,” says Brian Potter, plume, ever.” For decades, scientists have focused on the ways a meteorologist with the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Labora- that topography and fuels, such as the trees, grass or houses tory in Seattle who sometimes works with Clements. Indeed, consumed by flames, shape fire behavior, in part because these it took a global conflagration much darker than any forest fire things can be studied even when a fire isn’t burning. But this to even begin laying the foundations of this work. Kingsmill’s line of inquiry has offered only partial answers to why certain observation about the bomb, it turns out, isn’t far off. blazes, like the Pioneer Fire, lash out in dangerous and unexpected ways — a problem magnified by severe drought, heat he evening of July 27, 1943, was stiflingly hot in Hamburg, and decades of fire suppression. Germany. The leaves of oak and poplar trees hung still A mere 1 percent of wildfires account for roughly 90 percent T in the air as women and teenagers finished factory shifts of the land burned each year in the Western United States. and boarded streetcars. They returned home to six-story flats Some of these fires “really are unprecedented,” says Mark that lined the narrow streets of the city’s working-class neigh- Finney, of the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Sciences borhoods. They opened windows to let in cooler air, and folded

14 High Country News April 3, 2017 themselves into bed. It was nearly 1 a.m. when British planes arrived. Searing yellow flares drifted down over the city, dropped to mark the city’s eastern quadrant as that night’s target. Bombs followed, tearing open buildings and exposing their flammable contents to a rain of incendiary canisters that hissed as they fell. Thousands of small fires sprang up. Families retreated into basements. The buildings above them roared into flame, and A model German apartment building these growing fires greedily sucked air from their surround- goes up in flames ings. Their collective inhalation drew winds through the narrow during a test of the urban canyons, pulling along embers that ignited yet other M-69 incendiary bomb buildings. Within minutes, the fires were merging. in the 1940s at Dugway The British historian Martin Middlebrook has collected the Proving Ground, in accounts of survivors who dampened their clothing, fled their Utah. bunkers and crawled through the streets. They described the S tandard Oil Development inflowing winds as “shrill,” “shrieking” and “howling” — the COmpany scream of “an old organ in a church when someone is playing all the notes at once.” Gales exceeding 110 mph uprooted trees, pushed struggling full-grown adults deeper into the fire zone, and sucked babies and elders into burning buildings. The winds swirled into flaming tornadoes that swept up people and turned them into “human torches.” Balls of fire shot out of buildings. Within 60 minutes, a spiraling pillar of smoke had swelled into an anvil-shaped thunderhead that towered 30,000 feet over the city. At least 42,000 people died, and another 37,000 were in- jured. Sometime during the night, someone scribbled a word for A Lancaster plane flies over Hamburg, the unspeakable destruction into the logbook of the Hamburg Germany, in 1943. fire department: “feuersturm” — in English, “firestorm.” On the night of July Such cataclysms had occurred before. Fires destroyed Lon- 27, 1943, more than don in 1666, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871, and San Francisco 700 planes dropped following the 1906 earthquake. But Hamburg might have been bombs that started the the first time that people intentionally created a firestorm, with Hamburg firestorm. chilling calculation. Imperial War Museum The British chose to bomb that section of the city, not just to demoralize the workers in Germany’s critical U-boat industry, but also because of the tightly packed buildings that covered 45 percent of its ground area. And their tactics were almost certainly influenced by experiments begun four months earlier, across an ocean and half a continent, on a remote desert playa in northwest Utah. There, the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service had com- missioned Standard Oil Development Company to construct a row of steep-roofed European-style apartment buildings. Erich Men- delsohn, an architect who had fled Nazi Germany, specified every detail: 1 1/4-by-2-inch wood battens, spaced 5 7/8 inches apart, to An aerial view shows hold the roof tiles; 1-inch wood flooring underlain by 3 1/2-inch ruined buildings in cinderblocks, and so on — all to replicate the dwellings of German Hamburg, Germany, industrial workers. The wood was maintained at 10 percent mois- after the bomb- ture to mimic the German climate. Rooms were outfitted with induced firestorm, authentic German curtains, cabinets, dressers, beds and cribs — in July 1943. complete with bedding — laid out in traditional floor plans. Imperial War Museum Then, military planes dropped various combinations of charges on the buildings, seeking the most efficient way to pen- understand how it works. And yet these old experiments, finished etrate the roofs and lace the structures with flame. by 1970, are still a key source of knowledge about extreme fire Those experiments offered clues on what factors could cause behaviors. Until recently, technology was simply too limited to firestorms. And in the years following World War II, scientists reveal much more about the specific mechanisms by which a fire would study Hamburg and other bombing raids to derive basic plume might feed a firestorm, let alone how beasts like fire torna- numbers for predicting when a firestorm might form: the tons of does and fireballs form. Scientists needed new ways to see within munitions dropped per square mile, the number of fires ignited the smoke and turbulent flames — to make the invisible visible. per square mile, and the minimum area that must burn. They And as it happens, they began finding them almost by accident. concluded that Hamburg’s unusually hot weather set the stage for the firestorm, by making the atmospheric layers above the ne morning in February 2005, Craig Clements watched city more unstable and thus easier for a smoke plume to punch as a 6-foot wall of flame crept across a prairie a few miles through. Scientists theorized that this powerful rise had drawn O outside Galveston, Texas. He was not yet a fire scientist; in the winds that whipped the flames into even greater fury. in fact, he was slogging through his seventh year of gradu- Later, scientists studying urban fires during the Cold War ate school, studying a completely unrelated topic — mountain noticed something that underscored this finding: When a fire winds. This was just a side project, a favor he was doing for his plume rotated, the rate of burning seemed to increase on the Ph.D. advisor at the University of Houston, who had a steel ground. It suggested that rotation lessened the drag between weather tower in the field. A prescribed fire had been planned the plume and its surrounding air, allowing it to rise more there to prevent fuel buildup that could cause a more serious strongly and pull in fresh oxygen more effectively on the ground. blaze. What would happen, they wondered, if they mounted Fire is so universally familiar that we take for granted that we extra instruments on the tower to measure the winds, heat

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 The Bald and Eiler fires in Northern California were only 10 miles apart, but they traveled in opposite directions, different than what could be predicted based on just the wind. R yan Albaugh

and gases released by the fire passing directly beneath it? The column of smoke stretched, narrowed, and accelerated into a fire results were stellar: Clements’ sensors showed that the flames tornado two football fields across, with winds swirling 30 mph. produced a surprisingly strong pulse of water vapor. These tornadoes, or “whirls,” can pose sudden dangers in Scientists knew, theoretically, that the combustion of dry plant wildfires. During a 1989 blaze near Susanville, California, a matter would release water vapor along with carbon dioxide, but powerful whirl raced out of a flame front, with winds estimated it had never been measured this carefully in a real fire. And when at 100 mph. Three fire engines retreated just in time to escape Clements showed his work at a conference several months later, being torched, but four crewmembers were hurled into the air — scientists there implored him to do more experiments. “It rescued all of them seriously burned. my life, my academic career,” Clements now says. “Totally.” For now, fire whirls are nearly impossible to predict. But Clements abandoned his previous line of study and landed a that afternoon at Fort Hunter Liggett, Clements and Lareau faculty job at San Jose State in 2007, where he continued his re- began to get a sense of how they form. search. His instrument towers, deployed in carefully controlled It was an eerie and beautiful process, hidden deep inside the fires, provided yet more unprecedented and precise measure- smoke column. First, an embryonic disturbance in the fabric of ments: how winds accelerate and draft into an advancing flame the plume: Hot rising gases began to rotate with the motion of front, the heat and turbulence above the flames, and the speed an air current coming from the side. This vague motion co- of the rising hot air. alesced into two small, separate whirls. They circled around one Still, dangerous behaviors like fire tornadoes, or lofting of another like dancing, swaying cobras preparing to mate, then embers, usually happen in much larger fires than experiments merged into a single powerful vortex. can replicate. And the plumes of those fires rise thousands of “The laser is seeing through a lot of the smoke,” says Lareau. feet. Clements was capturing the action only within a few feet of “It’s showing you something that you can’t necessarily see by the ground. And he was just getting point measurements — like the naked eye about what the fire is doing.” If firefighters had following a single bird to understand the movement of an entire access to similar technology, they could potentially recognize an flock wheeling in the sky. impending whirl in real time before it forms, and escape. Clements wanted to capture the whole phenomenon — to A month after Fort Hunter Liggett, Clements and Lareau look inside the opaque mass of an entire fire plume from a dis- stumbled onto another discovery at the 17,000-acre-and-growing tance, and see all of its parts swirling at once. In 2011, he found Bald Fire, north of Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. his lens: a technology called Doppler lidar. On a warm, hazy morning, the pair sped in their pickup truck Unlike the Doppler radar that police use to measure the along Highway 44, south of the fire, looking for a good vantage speed of passing cars, lidar is tuned to detect reflections of its point for seeing the plume. From the bed of the truck, their lidar low-powered laser off particles smaller than red blood cells. It and radar wind profiler pointed straight up at the sky, record- actually scans the sky, collecting thousands of pinpoint mea- ing the smoke, winds, and clouds directly overhead. Then the surements per second, which can be reassembled into a picture highway began to gradually descend down the slope of the vol- of both the plume’s surface and its internal air currents. Cle- canic plateau where the fire burned, and they noticed something ments and his then-Ph.D. student, Neil Lareau, mounted this strange. Even as the winds thousands of feet up blew north, the television-sized gadget in the back of a pickup truck and hit the smoke just below those winds was drifting steadily south. road in search of wildfires. They spent the rest of the day following the broad mass of In June 2014, live ammunition fired during an Army train- smoke as it oozed 20 miles downhill, like a gauzy, viscous lava ing exercise afforded them the chance to watch a fire roll through flow in the sky. During that drive, they downloaded weather 4,800 acres of grass and oak hills at the Fort Hunter Liggett train- and satellite images of the broader smoke plume from both the ing ground in California. They watched through lidar as a rotating Bald Fire and the similar-sized Eiler Fire, 10 miles to the south-

16 High Country News April 3, 2017 west of it. A surprising picture emerged. may have pushed the hot gases of the plume down onto them. In Smoke from the Bald Fire had shaded broad swaths of the the years since, however, scientists have uncovered another possi- landscape — cooling the ground, and several thousand feet of bility — a type of blowup that may have caused multiple fatalities air above it, by a few degrees. Even as the winds blew north, over the years, but left no survivors to describe what happened. this cool, dense air was rolling downhill like molasses, pushing Like Clements, Janice Coen stumbled onto these questions under the winds as it followed the contours of the land — carry- by accident. Coen works at the National Center for Atmospheric ing a layer of smoke 6,000 feet thick along with it. Research in Boulder, Colorado, where she studies fire’s inner “We had no idea we were going to see things like that,” says workings. In September 1998, she spent several hours aboard a Lareau, who now holds a faculty position at San Jose State. “It Hercules C-130 aircraft as it circled over Glacier National Park. seems like every time we go, we end up with new perspectives.” The McDonald Creek Fire was marching up a steep slope at A rotating The team’s insight about the Bald and Eiler fires has implica- roughly three feet per second. Its smoke obscured the advancing tions for predicting smoke and air quality — a constant concern flames, but infrared video cameras mounted outside the plane column for communities near large fires. It also impacted the fires them- recorded what was happening underneath. It was only later, as selves. Even though both fires existed in the same atmospheric Coen looked through individual frames of that video, that she of smoke environment of pressures and winds, and burned across similar noticed something strange: At one point, a jet of flame seemed stretched, terrain, they were spreading in opposite directions that day — to shoot ahead of the fire. It lasted only a second or two, but left Bald to the south, and Eiler to the north. This denser current a trail of newly ignited vegetation in front of the fire. Not until narrowed, and of cold air and smoke was actually pulling the Bald Fire in the Coen calculated the size of the pixels and the time between opposite direction of what was predicted based on wind alone. frames could she appreciate its true significance. accelerated Clements imagines a future in which lidar is not simply a The jet had surged 100 yards ahead of the fire’s front, ad- into a fire tool of research, but also standard equipment mounted with vancing 100 mph — “like a flamethrower,” she says. It was 10 automatic weather stations on fire trucks. times faster than the local wind — generated, somehow, by the tornado two This device would theoretically be much smaller and cheaper fire’s own internal tumult. than current technology. It scans the plume continuously to Coen called it the “finger of death,” and for her it brought football fields obtain real-time data, which “is then uploaded into a mainframe to mind the unconfirmed reports of fireballs that occasionally computer that’s running a fire-weather model,” says Clements, circulated among firefighters. She had never seen such a thing, across, with “and boom, problem solved.” The fire crew would receive a but as she examined footage of other fires, she was surprised to winds swirling fire-behavior forecast that reflects detailed information about a find fire jets again and again. Her infrared videos were in some plume’s evolving structure — something not currently possible. ways akin to those classic blurry clips of Sasquatch walking in a 30 mph. That forecast could warn about impending events, such as a forest — a strange and fleeting embodiment of fire’s turbulence, strengthening updraft that might conspire with winds higher up without clear explanation for its existence. to toss embers into unburnt areas, or an incipient plume collapse When you think about turbulence, what comes to mind is that might splash the fire and hot gases in unexpected directions. something felt but not seen — like a bumpy airplane ride, where Yet even in its ideal form, that bit of technology wouldn’t the air currents themselves are invisible. Only in the special case be able to forecast everything: Some extreme fire behaviors are of fire is it possible to see turbulence with the naked eye — sort driven by smaller-scale forces that even lidar can’t capture. Sci- of. The flames are composed of hot, glowing gases; their flickers entists suspect these might be responsible for some of the more and licks are the roiling movements of those gases. That move- tragic firefighter deaths in recent years. ment unfolds too quickly for the eye to comprehend. So Finney has spent years slowing down videos of fire in experiments at his he South Canyon Fire hardly seemed threatening at first. Missoula laboratory, rewinding and replaying them, exposing the Lightning started it on July 2, 1994, atop a ridge overlook- secret details that have long hidden in plain view. An advancing T ing Interstate 70, a few miles west of Glenwood Springs, flame front seems chaotic. “But there is organization in there,” Colorado. It crept at a civil pace down the mountain’s slopes, he says. There are “flame structures that (are) very repeatable.” through dry grass and Gambel oak. Then, around 3 p.m. on July In his lab experiments, Finney used high-speed cameras to 6, a cold front swept over the area, spawning winds that pushed watch what amounted to miniature forest fires: walls of flame the lower part of the fire across the mountain’s southern face — advancing through hundreds of cardboard “trees” the size of igniting the base of an unburned drainage. The fire crew work- matchsticks. ing there may not have realized their peril until too late. The advancing flame front resembles a jagged-toothed Fourteen firefighters were crossing the drainage as the fire saw blade at any given instant, with interspersed high and entered its lower reaches. The flames quickly gained on them as low points, flickering several times per second. But slow it they hurried diagonally across it, toward the ridge top, following down, watch a single one of these high points, and you begin to a firebreak through the dense vegetation that they had cleared perceive something more complex. The flickering peak of flame the day before. Firefighter Kevin Erickson, a couple hundred repeatedly curls over on its side, like a surfing wave in Hawaii, feet in front of the others, glanced back to see a wall of flame viewed edge-on as it rolls into a pipe and crashes on itself. advancing up the sides of the gully before he crested the ridge This churning wave of flame rolls over and over, staying in and scrambled down its other side. Firefighter Eric Hipke was roughly the same place. It is a horizontal, rolling current, driven 45 seconds behind him. His pace quickened as the heat grew un- by the constant push and pull of gases within the fire. Combus- bearable. Several steps short of the ridge top, a blast of searing tion gases heated to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit are only one- air struck him from behind. He slammed to the ground with a quarter as dense as ambient air — a difference that makes them yell, then scurried to his feet, shielding his face from a mael- more buoyant and causes them to rise, creating the flickering strom of smoke and flying embers, and sprinted over the top. peaks of flame. Cooler, denser gases rush downward to fill the Hipke was the last person to reach the ridgeline alive. void, driving the downward side of the rolling current and press- Only later did he realize that his backpack’s shoulder straps ing down on the fire to create low spots in the flame front. had melted through, leaving it bobbing from his waist belt. He Finney’s slow-motion videos show that these rolling eddies sustained third-degree burns across the back of his arms, legs, exist in pairs within the fire. They roll in opposite directions, torso and head. The bodies of the 12 remaining crewmembers coupled like interlocking gears. Their combined motion periodi- were found that evening. (Two from another party, who died cally pushes down on the advancing front of the fire, causing in a separate part of the blaze at the same time, were found flames to lick downward and forward, ahead of the fire. July 8.) Hipke’s crew was strung out along the path they’d been Finney believes that these forward flame-licks are scaled- following, some with their backpacks still on — as though over- down versions of the “fingers of death” that Coen has seen in come, simultaneously, by a sudden force. wildfires — possibly even related to the fireballs said to have Observers have speculated for years about what, exactly, shot out of buildings during the 1943 Hamburg firestorm. killed them. The fire may have overtaken them or a gust of wind Coen has actually documented similar flame-rollers in real

www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Mark Finney and other scientists observe fire spreading in a wind tunnel at the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. The experiments are filmed with high-speed cameras so that the fire’s movement can be better observed once the footage is slowed down. RICHARD BARNEs/OTTO

wildfires using infrared video. But she believes that the finger is mixed with charcoal. These spots lay row upon row, like the of death also requires another factor. As bushes and trees are ghostly foundations of a dead city. In a sense, that is exactly heated by an approaching fire, their decomposing cellulose what they are. releases hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide and other flam- In 1967, workers with the Forest Service and the Depart- mable gases in a process called pyrolysis. ment of Defense stacked 342 piles of juniper and piñon logs Coen and Shankar Mahalingam, a fluid-dynamics engineer in this place — 20 tons of wood per pile, spaced 25 feet apart. at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, believe that rolling Then, at 8 a.m. on Sept. 29, they set fire to them. currents can mix these flammable gases with oxygen-rich air. Project Flambeau comprised some two-dozen experiments “The dangerous situation is when the fire is going up on a hill,” like this one, meant to simulate an American suburb under says Mahalingam. “Maybe there are pyrolysis products that nuclear attack — specifically, the many small fires that would The flickering have accumulated” in front of the fire and mixed with fire- merge into a storm, as happened not only in Hamburg, but also boosting oxygen. As the flame licks forward into this invisible Hiroshima and Nagasaki. peak of flame tinderbox, it ignites a blowtorch. Lengthy reports describe how helium balloons released near Reflecting back on the South Canyon Fire in 1994, it is the fire here rose several hundred feet, then swooped down into repeatedly tempting to wonder whether the same blast that flattened the flames, revealing strong downdrafts feeding the fire from its Hipke near the ridge top also killed the 12 firefighters behind sides. But what drew Potter’s interest was the water. Concen- curls over on him — one of them just 40 yards back. Some have even specu- trations of water vapor rose 10 to 20 times higher than the its side, like a lated that Hipke would have died along with them — his lungs surrounding air. seared by hot combustion gases — had he inhaled rather than Water is a major product of combustion, second only to car- surfing wave in yelled as he fell to the ground. Coen sees the South Canyon bon dioxide. It forms as oxygen binds to the hydrogen atoms in Hawaii, viewed tragedy as one of several likely caused by the “finger of death” wood, gasoline or just about any other fuel — creating hydrogen — a monster created by the turbulent respiration of the fire oxide, otherwise known as H2O. Burning four pounds of per- edge-on as it itself and the violent rise of its hot, buoyant gases. fectly dry wood releases a pound or two of water. These same buoyant gases also supply the momentum that Exhale onto a car window and you will see another form of rolls into a pipe drives a fire whirl to spin once it is triggered. And on a much the same phenomenon, fogging the glass: water produced from larger scale, they are what pushes a fire plume ever higher in the oxidation of food you have eaten. This vapor is familiar and and crashes on the sky, powering the in-drafts that keep the fire burning below. mundane; it hardly seems like a violent force. But the source of the speed and energy with which these And yet water vapor fuels the strongest updrafts in nature, itself. gases rise is still the subject of intense speculation. Potter, of says Potter, from thunderstorms to tornadoes to hurricanes. the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, has found some As moist air rises during these storms, the water vapor con- surprising possible answers. They arise, in part, from some denses into cloud droplets, releasing a small amount of heat of those old military fire experiments — these particular ones that keeps the air slightly warmer than its surroundings, so it conducted in the aftermath of World War II by a U.S. govern- continues to rise. “Water,” he says, “is the difference between a ment that feared the devastation of Hamburg might represent weak updraft and a really powerful updraft.” the future of modern warfare. Potter wondered if the water vapor released from combustion might infuse extra energy into wildfire plumes. By con- n the wrinkled, sage-covered mountains of Nevada near densing and giving off heat, it might allow some plumes to rise the California border, 30 miles east of Mono Lake, there is higher and faster, accelerating the fire on the ground. I a meadow that seems to lie in shadow even on sunny days. Through a bit of serendipity, this theory actually led to Cle- Spread across it are hundreds of dark patches, where the soil ments’s first fire experiment — the prescribed prairie burn back

18 High Country News April 3, 2017 How fire moves

Transverse flame Gazing at a fire like one modeled here — peak and hopefully from a safe distance — you’d first Fluid boundary layer “streak” notice the flame zone. Paired spirals — or spacing vortices — of spinning air give fire itsflame peaks and troughs. Vortex pairs push the Smoldering Concave flames down into the fuel. The fire spreads flame through forward bursts. Like waves of water parcels breaking on a beach, waves of flame splash onto unignited fuel, several times a second, causing intermittent heating and cooling. Meanwhile, concave flame parcels — small dishes of flames — splash throughout the flame zone. In smoldering combustion, the charcoal left Flame zone behind by a fire burns like the charcoal in a grill. Stream-wise Peak and “streak” spacing of charcoal reveals vortex the pattern of the fire that passed through. The Intermittent pairs heating charcoal under the peaks burns brighter and glows longer because it had less oxygen during the burn. Sometimes wind is induced by fire; Unignited fuel sometimes it drives a fire. Thefluid boundary Forward layer indicates the air that’s an important part bursts of a fire. A fire segment like this one would be part of a very dynamic, variable conflagration expanding to the left and right for a very long Flame peaks and troughs way. The entire flame zone would be moving, and Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory | Brian Elling hopefully so would you. Maya L. Kapoor

in 2005. It was Potter, who happened to know Clements’ Ph.D. stratosphere, powering a vicious blaze on the ground — as advisor, who suggested it. Neither the results of Clements’ Pioneer did — and one whose smoke never escapes the top of experiment nor those of Flambeau were conclusive about the the boundary layer at 3,000 feet, leaving the fire stunted, like a importance of this pulse of water vapor. Still, some people have weather-beaten dwarf tree gasping for life at timberline. latched onto the theory. Michael Reeder, a meteorologist at Monash University in 2UW made two more passes through the plume of the Australia, is one of them. He believes that water was pivotal in Pioneer Fire on Aug. 29. During that third and final fueling the firestorm that swept through the suburbs of Can- N pass, static electricity roared through the cockpit radio. berra, the Australian capital, on Jan. 18, 2003. Concerned that lightning from the plume might strike the The fire consumed 200,000 acres of drought-stricken terri- plane, the pilot turned off his antenna. tory that day, isolating the city under a glowing haze of Hallow- That flight yielded far more than the first direct measure- een orange. Remote infrared scans suggest that during a single ment of a plume’s updraft. Days later, Clements found himself 10-minute period, it released heat equivalent to 22,000 tons looking at a portrait of the fire’s plume unlike any that has of TNT — 50 percent more than the energy unleashed by the existed before: a vertical MRI slice of sorts cut along the path atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. of the plane—captured by its fine-tuned scientific radar, aimed A series of four pyrocumulonimbus clouds rose into the straight down. stratosphere that afternoon. These fire-fueled, anvil-shaped Color-coded by the velocity of its air currents, the blotchy thunderheads lofted black, sooty hail up to six miles away. One mass resembled a hovering spirit — large-headed, legless and of them spawned a tornado that snapped the tops off pine trees deformed. Clements’s trained eye began to pick out some basic as it plowed a path of destruction 12 miles long and a quarter- structures: a 40 mph downdraft next to a 60 mph updraft signi- mile wide. fied a turbulent eddy on the edge of the plume. Hot air pushing The tornado and the height of the clouds “point to some- up past cooler, stationary air had set in motion a tumbling, thing extraordinary,” says Reeder. “(They) require moisture horizontal vortex — the sort of thing that could easily have — and the question is: How do you get that much moisture over accounted for the plane’s brief freefall. Those blotchy radar eastern Australia during drought conditions?” pictures may finally allow us to see through wildfire’s impulsive, Douglas Fox is a Combustion provides a plausible source for it. Reeder esti- chaotic veneer — and perceive the more predictable, underlying freelance writer based in mates that the fire incinerated over 2 million tons of wood and forces that guide its behavior. “We didn’t even know this would Northern California. His vegetation that day, liberating at least a million tons of water work,” said Clements. “This is the most exciting thing I think stories have appeared vapor into the sky. I’ve ever seen in my career.” in Scientific American, The temperature and density differences that drive such Simply seeing can be transformative. Not until people saw Discover, Nature, Esquire, Virginia Quarterly cataclysmic power can seem deceptively minuscule. When N2UW microbes could they comprehend and fight diseases like malaria Review, National flew through the plume of the Pioneer Fire in 2016, its instru- — once blamed on foul spirits or miasmas. And not until Earth’s Geographic, and The Best ments registered updrafts of 80 to 100 miles per hour. Yet at that colorless, odorless magnetic field became visible could people American Science and elevation, 8,000 feet above the flames, the interior of the plume appreciate how it shaped the planet’s environment. Nature Writing. was only 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding While the smoke plume of the Pioneer Fire was apparent to air, meaning that its buoyant stampede through the atmosphere the naked eye, the violent forces within it were also deceptively This coverage was powered by a density difference of just about 1 percent. invisible. As the plane first approached it on Aug. 29, the pilot’s is supported by In other words, given the right atmospheric conditions, a standard weather console showed the plume as nothing but a contributors to the High few degrees of warmth and extra buoyancy could spell the dif- swath of cool blue — a seemingly gentle updraft, with no hint of Country News Enterprise ference between a plume that pushes 40,000 feet up, into the what lay in wait. Journalism Fund.

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 DEAR FRIENDS

Spring break, snowpack and tricky ravens

The daffodils are bright and the apricot trail names, per AT tradition) had a story news and politics, Pete says. “We enjoy tree behind the High Country News office to share: The day before their visit, they’d the honest news of the West,” Riley adds. in Paonia has burst into bloom. Spring is rescued a man who’d broken the top of Enjoy the sun and the snow, you two! here — we think — so we’ll be taking one his femur in Dominguez Canyon, west of Some news on an old friend: Story- of our quarterly publishing breaks and town — carrying him more than a mile to teller and desert-reveler Katie Lee’s folk Melissa Muñoz and skipping an issue. Look for another issue the parking lot. His hip was replaced that opera will be performed in Cottonwood, Katja Nasr picked May 1. evening. Our readers are real American Arizona, this May. Katie originally wrote up some of the latest As the days slowly lengthen, our visi- heroes. Maude, Billy & Mr. ‘D’ years ago, based issues as well as tors are returning like the robins on the Melissa Muñoz and Katja Nasr also on a story by author Helen Eustis. The information about back patio. In the first days of March, a came by. Melissa used to volunteer with story, which details a journey of love and a BLM development plan for the valley group of friends who’d met on the Appala- public health campaigns in Denver and death in the West, will be produced with where High Country chian Trail stopped by. Gary and Kiki, who now lives in Paonia, where she works fellow Arizona folksingers. News is based. live in the North Fork Valley, and visiting on environmental issues on the Western Lastly, a few corrections from the Brooke Warren friends Awesome and Possum (those are Slope. It has been an “eye-opener,” seeing travel issue (HCN, 3/6/17). In her essay how hydraulic fracturing could impact a “An expedition through the Edgelands,” place like the North Fork Valley, she says. Diane Sylvain wrote that certain ravens Katja, who has been an environmentalist introduced themselves as “Corvus” and since the 1960s, protested at Rocky Flats, “Corvax.” The writer is well aware that the infamous former nuclear weapons the correct word is “Corax” without the facility near Denver. Thanks for sharing “v,” but believes that the raven in ques- your stories with us! tion was either croaking with an accent Father-son duo Pete and Riley Gang or perhaps just having her on. In any of Petaluma, California, stopped by on a case, she apologizes for the error, which sunny day in mid-March. Riley was on the the ravens, naturally, find hilarious. In road for a ski trip through the Western “Cowboys with surfboards,” there was an U.S. and Whistler and Banff in Canada, error on crop succession near Hanalei, for about two months, taking advantage Hawaii. The taro field did not take the of this year’s awesome snowpack. His dad place of an older sugarcane plantation; flew out to join him for two weeks, and the rather it was once a rice plantation, with pair made time to visit us in Paonia. They sugarcane growing on the hill above. appreciate HCN’s mix of environmental —Anna V. Smith, for the staff

20 High Country News April 3, 2017 MARKETPLACE

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24 High Country News April 3, 2017 WRITERS ON THE RANGE

Democrat Rob Quist performs at the University Theater in Great Falls in celebration of Republican Greg Gianforte, who has aligned himself with the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Forest Service Northern Region/Flickr President Donald Trump. Wikicommons The battle over Montana’s vacant House seat Even if you don’t normally consider high- previously left the band for a successful these turbulent times, the question in stakes poker a spectator sport, you may solo career.) In his political campaign, voters’ minds will be: Who understands want to turn your attention toward the Quist, who was raised on a Montana Montana, and who will have the interests Treasure State. Up here, we’re watching cattle ranch, has focused on the agri- of everyday Montanans in mind? the Republican Party double down on a culture economy, quality education and Montanans tend to remember their candidate with a losing hand against a access to public lands and rivers. history, when the Copper Kings bought Democrat who wears a Stetson and plays Republican Greg Gianforte is a highly Senate seats with envelopes of cash. the banjo. successful businessman in the tech This is a problem for Gianforte, because Winner takes all, or in this case a industry who is proud of his business the more money he spends, the more he vacated seat in the House of Representa- acumen and his fiscal and social conser- inadvertently reinforces the story that OPINION BY tives. Neither man has spent an hour in vatism. His sole brush with the elector- he is a rich man trying to buy votes. The Ben Long any elected office, which lately appears ate came in 2016, when he challenged message and the medium don’t matter as not only to be an asset for the job, but a Democratic incumbent Steve Bullock for much as the means. prerequisite. the governor’s mansion. Gianforte already stepped in the Here’s the deal: When President Don- Gianforte, who lives in Bozeman, horse pucky on this topic. In his last ald Trump named Montana Congress- anted up millions of his own dollars for campaign, it came to light that he had man Ryan Zinke to be Interior secretary, that campaign and still lost to Bullock sued the Montana Department of Fish, it triggered a special election for Mon- by 4 percentage points. One loss may not Wildlife and Parks over public-fishing tana’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Rep- mean much; after all, Abraham Lincoln access to the Gallatin River near his Boz- resentatives. State party officials picked lost a lot of races before he was elected eman estate. This was a political disaster the candidates for the May 25 vote. president. But Gianforte’s loss occurred for Gianforte, because it reinforced the Anyone who regularly bets on a on an Election Day where the same vot- narrative that he failed to understand Democrat in Montana is a gambler who ers went for Donald Trump by 21 points how crucial access to the outdoors is to likes long odds. Democrats who do man- over Hillary Clinton. the rank-and-file Montanan. age to win here — Sen. Jon Tester or One might think that the kind of The issue wasn’t the river. The issue former Gov. Brian Schweitzer — tend to conservative, jobs-oriented voter who liked was freedom. That became the eights- know how to drive a tractor, look good billionaire-businessman Trump would and-aces hand that killed Gianforte’s in a cowboy hat and boots, and also have go for billionaire-businessman Gianforte. campaign for the governor’s job. It’s outsized rural Western personalities. Instead, thousands of Montana Trump still two months until the election, and This year, Democratic operatives supporters dumped Gianforte for a down- Gianforte may have cards he isn’t show- think they have their man in Rob Quist. ballot Democrat. In 2016, Trump’s coattails ing. However, he can’t undo the past. The Quist earned his statewide name recogni- and Gianforte’s pocketbook both fell short. Gallatin River narrative is still out there, tion not as a politician, but as a cowboy Even before Gianforte was chosen to fresh in the public’s mind, should Quist singer. Quist posters have been plastered run in the Congressional race, the na- chose to exploit it. all over county fairs and Fourth of July tion’s Republican establishment had gone picnics in Montana for decades. on the attack. A GOP Super PAC bought Ben Long writes about the environment He was a founding member of the six-figure ad buys against Quist, label- and politics in Montana. WEB EXTRA legendary Mission Mountain Wood ing him a gun-grabbing, Bernie Sanders To see all the current Writers on the Range is a syndicated service of Writers on the Range Band, which was the Montana bluegrass socialist. Maybe the labels will stick, but answer to the Grateful Dead, before they could also backfire. My guess is that High Country News, providing three opinion columns, and archives, columns each week to more than 70 newspapers visit HCN’s Web site, many of its band members were killed in this election will not be about jobs, health around the West. For more information, contact www.hcn.org a tragic plane crash in 1987. (Quist had care or even a referendum on Trump. In Betsy Marston, [email protected], 970-527-4898.

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BOOKS Living right in an unsettled world

For Mark Sundeen, the search began caged with a throng of its brethren. Then, and Greg Willerer, a white former teacher with a guilty meat snack. he wiped his sins away with a moist tow- with roots in the anarchist punk scene, After two decades of bumming around elette and pedaled home. create a tiny urban farm, hoping to localize the country — first as a dirtbag outdoors- It’s a wry encapsulation of a conun- and humanize Detroit’s inner-city food sys- man stringing together jobs in the rural drum that those who aspire to sustainabil- tem — part of a bigger ambition to build a West and later as a city-bound freelancer ity face: We carve out sacrifices here and more just version of a city bludgeoned by and “money-lung … whose sole purpose there — Drive less! Recycle! Install solar! industrial collapse, racism and poverty. was to inhale dollars, transform them — until they interfere with other desires. There is Ethan Hughes, who led a cross- into pleasure, then exhale a stream of In search of a clearer path, Sundeen, au- country, bike-driven “superhero” expedi- carbon into the air, feces into the sewer, thor of The Man Who Quit Money, sets out tion to do good, and his wife, Sarah Wilcox, and plastic containers into the landfill” to find people who have gone far beyond a classically trained soprano, who created — Sundeen settled in Missoula, Montana, what most of us consider “good enough.” a car-free, electricity-free intentional The Unsettlers: seeking a simpler existence. He got en- The result is The Unsettlers: In Search community in Missouri that engages in In Search of the Good gaged to a woman who valued the same, of the Good Life in Today’s America — a nonviolent activism. Finally, we meet Luci Life in bike-commuted 14 miles daily, lived on gorgeous new book that provides a con- Brieger and Steve Elliott, who founded a Today’s America garden feasts that took hours to concoct temporary twist on Wendell Berry’s 1977 successful small organic farm not far from Mark Sundeen and left the sink cluttered with whole- classic, The Unsettling of America. Where Missoula, and catalyzed a vibrant local 324 pages, hardcover: some dirt clods. Berry argues that industrial agribusiness food scene across western Montana. $26. In a world where human appetites and modern capitalism have distanced The book is part memoir — chronicling obliterate entire ecosystems, Sundeen people from the land and each other, Sundeen’s own new marriage and quest for Riverhead Books, recognized that what we choose to con- with catastrophic consequences for the a better life — part interwoven biogra- 2017. sume has moral implications. But one environment and communities, Sundeen phy, and part social history. But though night while grocery shopping, faced with explores a movement toward radical sim- Sundeen finds beauty in each of the the $6.50 price tag on organic butter, he plicity meant to solve those ills, digging couples’ lives, he doesn’t flatten them into broke and headed instead for the much deep into peculiarly American strains human Instagrams: “the soft-focus shots of cheaper stuff in the conventional food of utopianism and telling the stories of sun-dappled mason jars and fresh-picked aisles. There, he succumbed to a greasy three couples trying to live out their ide- pears” that tug at the hearts of the rest of breast of fried chicken, no doubt factory- als in wildly different places. us cubicle-bound hordes. Hubert and Will- raised on monoculture grain and cruelly Olivia Hubert, a black horticulturalist, erer must run off armed intruders from the crackhouse across the street instead of merely grappling with gophers as other farmers do. Hughes and Wilcox weary of the infighting so common in intentional communities and grope to maintain momentum when few of their peers are will- ing to commit to the enterprise for more than a summer. And Brieger and Elliott watch their dream enter mainstream so- ciety as yet another piece of the corporate machine: Mega-organic agriculture that plants sprawling monocultures and sends plastic-sealed produce thousands of miles, driving right over the environmental and community benefits of the small, diversi- fied farms that the couple built their own lives around. The characters are weird, stubborn and strong, and Sundeen provides a nuanced picture of their beliefs, under- pinned by both religious and social justice movements and influences ranging from Berry and Thomas Jefferson to the Quak- ers, Booker T. Washington, the Nation of Islam, Tolstoy and Gandhi. Importantly, Sundeen also acknowledges that the “re- nunciation of privilege” can become “just another means of exercising it.” In the end, nobody finds revelatory answers, and yet all persist despite ob- stacles. And Sundeen himself recognizes that his own role is not to be a pioneer of “Unsettler” Luci simple living, but to be what he already Breiger rides her is: A writer. In this, the book seems to bike home from the suggest that the true recipe for revolution fields after a day of is not utopianism per se, but the emotion- planting onions. She al foundations from which its practioners and husband Steve strive. In other words, to live right, one Elliot own Lifeline Farm Produce in must find true purpose, work hard in its Victor, Montana. service and do the best good she can. Rab Cummings By Sarah Gilman 26 High Country News April 3, 2017 Essay By Rafael Reyna

Every month or two, we met L ve up halfway across the someplace, seeking out landscape cheap hotels Ryan Nelson / Alamy Stock Photo or tent- his is a story about love and ing cattle into backcountry allotments. in the same place. Even though we had land management. Danielle accepted a wilderness ranger job spent so much time apart, we couldn’t camping Danielle and I are seasonal in the Wind River Mountains of Wyo- imagine our lives without each other. federal employees. When we ming, leading a trail maintenance crew But the spotty job market continued during three- Tfirst met, in the winter of 2014, Danielle and riding horseback alongside a team of to put mountain ranges and a sea of was a forestry technician in the Coconino packhorses. Every month or two, we met lakes between us. In the summer of 2016, day weekends. National Forest, based in the bustling up halfway someplace, seeking out cheap I accepted a position in Grand Teton tourist town of Sedona, Arizona. I worked hotels or tent-camping during three-day National Park at the historic Elk Ranch. for the Natural Resource Conservation weekends. But most of the time, only the Danielle, in turn, accepted a permanent But most Service, in a ghost town 200 miles away. Continental Divide and our letters con- seasonal job as a lead wilderness ranger Danielle’s job was to implement a nected us. in the Boundary Waters of northern of the time, wilderness education program for “city In July, Danielle, who is also a Type Minnesota. Her job entailed up to several folk,” which often involved answering 2 wildland firefighter, was sent out on miles of daily paddling and portages, only the questions like, “When do you turn off the a hand crew for two weeks in Libby, while my work was that of a typical waterfalls?” My job was to help restore Montana, and forced to cancel one of our Wyoming cowboy — hazing one-ton wild Continental the habitat of an unremarkable but precious meetings. Our shared disap- bison and keeping an eye out for grizzlies endangered gray bird called the south- pointment erupted into a vicious argu- and wolves. One day, while visiting me in Divide and western willow flycatcher. This included ment. One night, when she called from Moose, Wyoming, Danielle sat on a piece chopping down invasive tamarisk and fire camp, I told her that I felt we were of driftwood and gazed into a cerulean our letters protecting streams from cows by put- running away from each other and in lake. “I want you to come with me to ting up barb-wire fence. While Danielle turn, driving ourselves mad. “Just cut Minnesota,” she said softly. She paused, connected us. typically talked to 300 tourists in a day, I me loose!” were my exact words. The waiting for a reply. sometimes went a week speaking only to distance, once romantic, had begun to I realized that I couldn’t wait for the Ghost, a feral cat who deigned to keep me feel suffocating. I suspected that Dani- job market to cooperate: It was time for company on the front steps of my cabin. elle loved her work more than she loved me to make good on my vow. And so, in For the first year, Danielle was happy me, and she suspected the same of me. the spring of 2017, Danielle and I will to drive eight hours every other weekend Though both of us were wrong, the quietly part with the mountain forests to see her lonely cowboy on Signal Road. distrust was painful. The day after that and deserts of the West we so love. I’m I signed up for cell and internet service argument, I sent Danielle an apology in looking for forestry work near my fiancée so that we could keep in touch between the form of a poem; such small gestures, in Grand Marais, Minnesota. The pros- visits. In the fall of 2015, Danielle moved along with the promise of the next re- pect of marrying and settling down in the in with me at the ranch, which is where union, coaxed us through the hard times. humble North Woods tickles Danielle and we typically spend our winter off-seasons. In the winter of 2016, after being I even more than a rafting trip through Our love seemed as serene as an alpine together for two years, I asked Danielle to the Grand Canyon or peak-bagging Tee- lake. marry me. It was a sweltering 92 degrees winot. Maybe that’s just us, preparing for Danielle and I are nomadic by nature. in mid-February. We backpacked into the a new adventure. In fact, the work we do encourages it. In Superstition Mountain Wilderness of Ari- the spring of 2015, I was offered a posi- zona, and I proposed at sunset on the yel- Rafael Reyna is a graduate student tion as a range technician for the Forest lowed cliff face of Battleship Mountain. in ecological restoration at Colorado Service outside Taos, New Mexico, riding We held each other and vowed that we State University. He currently resides in on the high desert plateaus and herd- would — somehow and soon — find work Wikieup, Arizona, with his fiancée.

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Betsy Marston

MONTANA CALIFORNIA Don’t even think about asking Scott Sales, All the Marine Corps Air Ground Center the Republican president of the Montana at Twentynine Palms, California, wants Senate, to join you on a friendly bike ride to do is expand its training turf by 165 around Helena, the state capital. When square miles. And the hitch? The Cali- a bill came up that would have increased fornia desert tortoises that call the place road safety by establishing definite driving home. Unfortunately, if the U.S. Army’s distances between vehicles and bicycles, previous attempt at relocating tortoises Sales unloaded. Even if you honk at cy- is any guide, it’s a dicey solution. After clists, he said, “They won’t move over (be- the Army moved 670 tortoises from the cause) they think they own the highway.” Barstow area to the western Mojave Moreover, he added, bike riders are “rude,” Desert in 2008, 90 of the animals were “self-centered” and “have an “entitle- dead in less than a year, most eaten ment mentality,” so “quite frankly, I don’t by coyotes. And not surprisingly, the want more of them in the state because tortoises, which are protected by federal there’s already too many of them as it is.” and state endangered species acts, prefer Dick Barrett, a Democratic senator from their native turf, defined by “complex COLORADO They may not share, but they do shear. Missoula, took offense, saying he’d been a Brooke Warren social networks linked by trails, arroyos cyclist for 40 years, reported the Missou- and hibernation borrows,” says the Los lian. But Sales’ attack helped kill the bill, Angeles Times. It is true that wherever which had passed the House, 62-37. full-time farmers stock the kitchen with 23,000 the tortoises are these days, enemies pounds a year of local vegetables and fruits, and abound, including dogs, solar developments and CALIFORNIA the annual payroll for 72 people is $700,000. ATV and other traffic. But in the new home that Snowfall was so heavy in the Sierra Nevada this “We pour so much into the tax rolls and yet they Marines have chosen for the tortoises, the threat winter that the grand total in parts of the Truck- ignore us,” said Spalding at a state Capitol news comes from voracious ravens, also a protected ee-Tahoe area may surpass 58 feet, Allen Best conference organized by the Escalante Cham- species. Ravens just love newly hatched tortois- notes in Mountain Town News. For the Squaw ber of Commerce. “That’s painful.” Scott Berry, es — one biologist calls them “walking tortellini Valley resort, it was the snowiest in 45 years co-founder of the Boulder Mountain Lodge, told for ravens” — because the thin-skinned babies of record keeping. But the melting of all those the Salt Lake Tribune that visitors come from have no defense against the birds. But you can big drifts, together with recent heavy rains, is all over the world to stay at his inn because they count on the Marines to hatch an arsenal to causing mice, chipmunks and other critters to be appreciate the spectacular scenery and relative meet the challenge: realistic-looking “techno- flooded out of their dens and into new homes. As solitude. “We see the (Grand Staircase-Escalan- tortoises,” which emit irritants derived from these new digs are often inhabited by humans, te) monument as a call to start a new garden,” grape juice concentrate whenever a raven pecks things can get crowded: “Mice can have upward Berry said, “and after 20 years we are seeing one. If that fails to deter the birds, the Marines of a dozen babies,” reports the Lake Tahoe News. those shoots come up.” can also employ a “raven-repulsion green laser,” “Then it’s pretty much an infestation.” a hand-held laser rifle with a mounted scope. Its CALIFORNIA intense beam of laser light sweeps a half-mile of UTAH A camouflaged hunter near Mono Lake, Califor- desert floor, causing ravens “to take to the air in To hear most Utah legislators tell it, public nia, thought he’d lure a coyote by lying flat on a chaotic chorus.” Ravens, however, are any- lands and national monuments drain local the grass and blowing a call that mimicked a thing but dumb. One of the 100 biologists hired economies and ought to be sold off or developed wounded rabbit. Well, the ruse worked, but the by the Marines speculated that the birds will more profitably by the state. The owners of a predator lured was a mountain lion that leaped quickly learn that lasers come — and lasers go. thriving restaurant near the Grand Staircase- for the hunter’s head. The hunter, who was not Escalante National Monument in Boulder, identified, shot the big cat twice, killing it. Lions WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see Utah, population 180, couldn’t agree less. Blake are a protected species, reports The Tribune, hcn.org. Spalding and Jen Castle, who named Hell’s but wildlife officers decided he was justified in Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and Backbone Grill and Farm after a weird local defending himself. often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag geological feature, say business is booming. Four photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram.

High If they’re unwilling to bend down with a Country baggie and bundle up a few dog turds, what News “ For people who care about the West. hope is there that big problems will get fixed in my High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a lifetime — or ever? magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write Lucia Hadella, in her essay, “The dog turds lurking on our trails,” from Writers” on the Range, hcn.org/wotr High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News April 3, 2017