The first day of summer has come and gone. It sure is nice to be home for the summer. I’ve been surfing and hanging out at the beach and really enjoying my bike rides to work. The flowers are in bloom and people are out running, walking and biking. I can peek out the windows at work and see plenty of people enjoying the water and I wish I could join them. I celebrated International Surf Day with a girls-only surf session at Tourmaline. I caught one wave, then one caught me and I figured that made us pretty even, but I guess I was wrong because I also received a few bruises. The water was so warm, I was able to “trunk it” despite the fact that several others were still wearing fullsuits.
Saturday was the Ocean Beach Street Fair which was a blast, and surprising not super-crowded (just nice-crowded). We got to see Brain Buckit play and got the great news that Amy and Corey have moved back to San Diego. Yay!!
Bear Fire from Glenwood
For those who haven’t heard, there are some huge fires in New Mexico right now, as is the norm for this time of the year. The Bear Fire is smack-dab in the middle of our study area (or, where our study area was since we aren’t doing field work this year). It started last Monday and raged out of control for the better part of last week. They are finally getting it somewhat under control; 71% contained as of this morning per the Morning Report. I’ve been in contact with some former field crew members who live or work in the area. The mushroom cloud picture was taken by Dan, who lives in Glenwood (about 90 minutes from camp), on the day the fire started.
Bear Fire
The map is from the New Mexico Fire Information website. Our base camp is near the top of the map between the Airstrip and Negrito Work Center. The fire is covering the majority of our study area. All the people (campers, Forest Service) in the area were evacuated shortly after the fire started. My hope is that is was a fast moving fire that cleared out the underbrush but still left the bigger trees (for the owls of course!). I talked with Gary who is stationed in Reserve while he works logistics on a few other smaller fires. He said that it is pretty crazy out there. He’s seen Chuck in his element, running logistics for the Bear Fire. So as I sit at my office everyday, I try not to worry too much about my owls. The owlets (if there were any this year, it has been very dry) would be able to fly by now so hopefully they got out in time. On the brighter side, we weren’t out there having to evacuated ourselves and all our equipment.
