Endless Summer - of Fire
Rice Ridge Fire, 2017
By Bill Lombardi
Montanans used to joke that we had two distinct seasons: winter and road construction.
Now we have three: winter, road construction and fire season, the latter of which is punctuated by searing temperatures and long dry spells brought on by a never-ending high-pressure system that stokes smoky weather and obscures the iconic Big Sky. Tourists who come here expecting the advertised bluebird skies are quickly disappointed by the amorphous haze that hides the state’s towering peaks and expansive great plains.
Now, like winter, we dread our seemingly endless summer fire season and the malaise that represses Montanans’ natural impulse to go outside, where land, sky and water always beckon.
This season is fueled by not only bone-dry timber and ground vegetation but by anxiety, worry, and a fire-industrial complex that is spread very thinly across the country, despite the millions of dollars spent in the sector.
We awake with grit in our eyes, ash on our decks, and a hoarse throat that reminds us that nothing has changed in weeks and the sky is still opaque, like a classic Russell Chatham canvas framed by green conifers in the foreground and indistinguishable mountains in the background.
Seeley Lake 2017, Rice Ridge Fire
Our weather forecasts include frequent updates on fire-containment percentages as well as air-quality reports, which range from moderate to unhealthy to hazardous.
TV weather forecasters spout a familiar forecast refrain: hot, dry and smoky. Forever, it seems.
Our firefighter friends suddenly disappear from our regular gatherings and are dispatched around the state and country to fight fires for weeks at a time. Their orders came a month earlier than normal in what many are predicting to be a historic fire season during a historic drought and hot spell during a historic health pandemic.
We used to love summer and its deep, clear blue skies, long, luxurious days and lingering dusks at our northern latitude, and the freedom and ability to explore Montana’s natural heritage -- the small creeks and big rivers, nearby mountainsides, and the coulees and ravines that divide the rolling plains of the eastern part of our state like a math problem.
But let’s face it -- summer’s over.
Ovando fire meeting 2017, Rice Ridge Fire
Despite these history-making events, Montana recently withdrew from the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of two dozen states working together to fight climate change. Ironically, just days after pulling out of the coalition, the governor requested that the U.S. Agriculture Department declare a drought emergency so Montana could qualify for federal relief dollars.
On the other side of the Continental Divide, Dr. Steven Running, a Nobel laureate at the University of Montana, said matter-of-factly on TV that this kind of weather was predicted decades ago when climate scientists started reviewing the data and raised an alarm: weather will become more extreme.
Seeley Lake threatened by 2017 Rice Ridge Fire
“We're seeing less of those cold extremes, and more of these hot extremes, right in our own weather statistics and of course that's what the climate models forecast," Running told MTN News.
I’ll bet on Running, not because he’s a scientist but because he doesn’t have a log in this firefight.
Meanwhile, I’ll clean up the downed timber and ladder limbs on the trees around our home, and support the firefighters who valiantly protect our lives, liberty and the pursuit of a (short) carefree summer in a world that is only getting hotter and worse for our children, who wonder why we’re letting our world go up in smoke.
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Bill Lombardi of Helena and Seeley Lake is a former journalist, writing about people and politics for The Baltimore Sun and as chief of Lee Newspapers State Bureau. He worked in local, state and national politics for three decades and with U.S. Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester.