Spotted Eagle, Benchmark Fire Update 9-1-15 1:30pm
Community Meeting Thursday evening in Choteau.
Yesterday: Despite strong winds the Moose Ridge, Spotted Eagle and Sheep Mountain fires experienced limited new growth. However, interior areas of unburned timber and tall grasses continued to burn with some active fire behavior. A heavy helicopter was able to drop approximately 2,000 gallons of water along the southeast perimeter of the Spotted Eagle Fire. This bucket work allowed crews to hold and strengthen fire line to the south of Swift Reservoir and along the eastern flank of the fire. There was no new activity on the Benchmark Fire.
Today: Fire managers plan to continue to use water bucket drops, as conditions allow, to extinguish hot spots near the fire line on both the Spotted Eagle and Moose Ridge fires. Crews will continue to build fire line along the southern flank of the Spotted Eagle Fire working towards the west. A red flag warning is in effect due to another day of high winds and lower humidity across the fire area. With these critical fire weather conditions, fire behavior could become more active throughout forested areas of timber and tall grasses.
Evacuations: The evacuation notice for Heart Butte has been partially lifted. Residents east of BIA Route 1 are returning to their homes. There are no other evacuations.
Community Meetings: A community meeting for the fires is scheduled for Thursday at 7PM in Choteau at the Stage Stop Inn.
Community Meetings: A community meeting for the fires is scheduled for Thursday at 7PM in Choteau at the Stage Stop Inn.
Spotted Eagle Fire
Acres: 48,815
Cause: Lightning
Location: 25 miles W of Dupuyer, MT
Containment: 0%Total personnel: 181
Cause: Lightning
Location: 25 miles W of Dupuyer, MT
Containment: 0%Total personnel: 181
Read More: Spotted Eagle, Benchmark Fire Update 9-1-15 1:30pm | http://k96fm.com/spotted-eagle-benchmark-fire-update-9-1-15-130pm/?trackback=tsmclip
"It is painful to see the frontier scrawled across the personalities and culture of individuals and a town I love dearly, but now that I am an outsider it is obvious. Their little fenced estates in the woods are their half of the quid pro quo their ancestors fulfilled: tame the wilderness and your private claims will be protected. Their desires are clear and simple: they want taxes to be low, infrastructure to be mediocre (certainly not good enough to help the poorest) and fuel to be cheap. They love their trucks and jet skis and four-wheelers and cars and dirt bikes and speedboats and snowmobiles and motorcycles and SUVs and brush cutters and chainsaws and log splitters and lawn mowers and backhoes and shotguns and semitrailers and rifles and pistols and guns. They hate the government and complain that it doesn’t do enough for them.
ReplyDeleteThey are profoundly ignorant of the vast human diversity and history around them and serenely contemptuous of the few snippets of knowledge they have collected. Put 500 of them in a room together and there probably won’t be a single classic poem or plotline of a work of world literature memorized between them, and if there is it will be in the head of a lone weirdo. There are only about three dates anybody appears to be aware of: 1492, 1776, 1945, and, by the time I was a senior in high school, 9/11, 2001. Most of them at some point complete the pilgrimage to the great holy city in the south, the place in the desert that god itself has touched, made sacred, made itself physically manifest in the world. They return from Las Vegas renewed, uplifted, their faith in financial manipulation restored, and full of hope that if they are pure enough, the god Mammon just might bless their own lives, someday.
So even though they are poor, in debt, and only able to move in a tiny world, mentally they are all little aristocrats."
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-howling-wilderness-of-mind.html
Ordinarily any comment that came from an anonymous person would be waved on, with the exception of people whom I know would be hurt if they were detected. But I wish that "Adam" or whoever you are had supplied a name as well as a blog url. I did look at the blog and would like to be a little more part of the conversation, but I have no person to address.
ReplyDeleteI take it you already know I'm in sympathy. I've been working on a history of Valier that is quite parallel to your thinking. Our industrial resource is water, which is a very interesting perspective since it depends on climate to pile up snow on the Rockies, a new treaty with the Blackfeet (after wiggling out of the last one), a lot of people with high-school minds who idealize Belgium, and a steady dribble of outsiders looking for a refuge and shocked to discover they haven't found it.
You could contact me at prairie@3rivers.net or just call the telephone directory.
Prairie Mary
Mary Scriver