Headline: Obligatory Vacation Picture Post Turns into Rant

So we’re back from Pinetop. Here are some obligatory pictures. Not too many, because I didn’t take a ton and also I’m too tired still to put a lot of work into posting.

The child met a squirrel. This picture is from after she petted it. I did the dutiful mom thing and yelled at her not to touch the wildlife, but inside I was thinking “at least it’s not venomous!” and thinking of Rafe and giggling.

One of her goals for this vacation was to climb a tree. She had a lot of help (she stepped on me!) in getting there, but here she is, in a tree.

Apparently climbing trees is hard.

Just a picture of some gorgeous green. I think we were on the Fort Apache Reservation at this point. I know we were in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. We got there by getting “lost.” 😀

Well, not really. Most everything in Pinetop was “downhill” from the resort where we stayed. On this day we went “uphill” just to see what was there. A whole lot of lovely scenery, it turned out. We stopped at Pole Knoll Recreation Area, mostly because it was completely empty. We were all alone and it was amazing. (And I kept changing knoll to gnoll in my head and that was most amusing.)

This is the San Juan fire, seen from the Petrified Forest. This was taken mid-afternoon, and apparently the fire was first reported that morning. It’s close to where we were staying, but not close enough that they’re afraid it will get to Pinetop.

This cloud of smoke makes me so angry. They know it’s human-caused. Even though, every ten feet it seemed like when we were going anywhere, there were signs about the fire danger. When we went to lakes, we could see they were very low. Places there should have been streams were dry. In some places the tops of trees were dead, and everywhere you looked you could see dead and dry trees and grass. IT’S NOT SO HARD TO NOT START A DAMN FIRE.

Now firefighters are in danger. Homes are in danger. People on vacation have been evacuated and even if the best of all things happens and they get the fire out today, no one dies and no homes burn, those people don’t get to rewind and fix their vacations. And that area (five thousand acres!) will still be burned.

Yes, fires are sometimes necessary. That doesn’t mean YOU (generic you) are the CHOSEN ONE who gets to start that damn fire!

Sorry, I’m just really angry. Right in the middle of our luxuriating in the rare (to us) beauty of a magnificent place, some dumbass entitled jerkoff was setting fire to it.

I kind of wish we’d wandered that way that day, with a great big stick to hand.

TL;DR

Trees and lakes are awesome and gorgeous and people who start fires when they’re told not to are dickwads.